Slow Southern Style
by GreenJadeIrish
Summary: Will is alive, that's what they have been told but is he really? The picture makes it look like it's true. Could the man with that slow southern style be Will Horton or is he just an amazing lookalike. Follow the journey as Sami, Lucas and the rest try to unravel the truth, and see if their dearest dreams can become reality?, If it is Will, can they get him back to Salem again?
1. Chapter 1

Slow Southern Style – Chapter 1

"Will Horton Alive! Killer claims last victim not dead! Wedding postponed for husband of victim!"

All of Salem wakes up to the sensational headlines the morning after the huge double society wedding. The news spreads like wildfire that Ben Weston has claimed that even though it was thought that Will Horton was dead the past two years, and a funeral was held, that it was simply not true.

Ben won't tell anyone how he knows though, and everyone believes he is just trying to hurt the family once more, he took away their loved one Will once before, and that he just wants to hurt them all over again.

Sami comes back to Salem breathing fire when she hears Ben's unbelievably cruel claims. She and Lucas show up at the police station to see their son's murderer. The police foolishly allow Sami to be in the same room as Ben, and before they realize what is happening, Sami is across the interrogation table, trying to strangle Ben, and when they try to pull her off, she goes for his eyes, screaming at him to tell them the truth.

Ben is cowering on the other side of the room, saying, "That woman's crazy"; a good comment coming from a psychopath. Sami lunges at him again, screaming, "tell me the truth, you bastard, you killed my baby."

Ben looks at her in a hurt fashion, and says "You don't have to be rude, do you?"

"Ah", screams Sami, "Let me at him, you won't have to worry about sending him back to Bayview, there won't be anything left."

Hope tells Ben, I don't know how much longer we can hold her back, you better tell us what you know.

Ben looks scared of the crazy woman, ironic! "I saw him", Ben says.

Rafe says, "You saw him at the hospital. He came to see you?"

Ben, "No, silly man. I saw him on the computer. There was a picture of him at his job. They let us use the computer so that we can keep our computer skills current."

Hope says, "You saw him in some article? Where did it come from? What was it about, why was Will mentioned?"

Ben, "It was in Memphis, he was shown on the advertisement for where he works. It's a club, he's their star performer."

Rafe, "What kind of a club? Will isn't a performer."

Ben, "It didn't say, it just said that it was the hottest and most popular club in Memphis, it showed Will on the poster outside, the star of the show. There was even a star around his face! It's a private club, you can only get in if you are a member or a guest of a member. But it wouldn't say anymore, it said that you had to experience it for yourself.

I tried to find a list of members so that I could go meet one and get them to take me with them so that I could see him and apologize for hurting him. I would have left the hospital so that I could do this. I felt bad when I thought he was dead, but now it's not so bad cause I know he's alright, that I didn't kill him like I thought.

That's why I had to stop the wedding, once I go there, and get Will to come back here, he's going to want his husband back.

Sorry, Paul, but Will gets Sonny, not you. Anyway, Sonny is only with you because he thought Will was gone, he loves Will more than you."

Rafe, "Ben, what's the name of the club?"

Ben, "Black Velvet, the pictures looked really fancy, I can't wait to see it."

Paul is freaking out at what Ben said and that Sonny didn't deny it. Why is everything being ruined, damn it. Why did Will have to pop up alive?

Hope, "How can Will be alive? They had a funeral and his parents saw him in the morgue. It must be a lookalike, why did Ben have to see the picture, and cause all of this trouble?"

Rafe doesn't believe it's Will, actually no one does, and they say so to Ben.

Ben looks at them and says, "See for yourself."

He asks Hope if he can show them the article. She agrees just so that they can get all of this cleared up, and for them to know that it's not Will, just a figment of Ben's disturbed mind. She hands him a tablet, and he types in the information to bring up the article from the Memphis newspaper's website. Soon as he is finished typing, the article pops up on the screen, along with the picture.

Sure enough, the guy in the photo is a dead-ringer for Will, pardon the pun, and they are shocked but sure it must be a coincidence. Ben's mind grabbed onto the photo making him think it was Will, so he wouldn't feel so guilty about having murdered one of his best friends, that's all, it has to be.

Rafe looks up the information for the club, and they try to contact someone there to get the performer's name, but the club refuses to give out any information on their entertainers for safety reasons. The only information that they can get from the club's management is that he is not from Memphis originally, he is from somewhere in the Midwest, you can tell from his accent. They joke that they don't hold that against him and they forgive him for that because he is so sweet and cute.

Sami and everyone at the police station still aren't convinced that it could be Wil, but they are not completely sure now that it's not Will either. Could it be Will, no that's insane, it can't be possible, he was buried, wasn't he?

They don't want to do it, but the only way to be sure is to test the DNA of the body in the casket? Can they really disturb Will's final resting place on such flimsy evidence? What should do they? They to go ask Sonny what he wants, but Lucas looks at them and says that Sonny has no right to decide one way or the other.

Justin agrees, unfortunately Lucas is right, Will and Sonny were legally separated when Will was murdered, so only his next of kin can decide, in this case, Sami and Lucas. Marlena looks at Sami, and asks her, "What do you want to do, sweetheart?"

Sami, "I can't believe that it's true, but my god, if there is a chance that my baby could be alive, I need to know. I have cried for him every day since that thing there killed him."

Sami looks at Lucas, and asks him, "What do you think we should do?"

Lucas replies, "I don't want to, but we need to know for sure, imagine if Will is out there somewhere?"

Sami and Lucas ask Hope to help them get Will's casket exhumed so that they can have a DNA test performed so that they can have definite proof that Will is dead, and that it is him in the casket. That way they can be absolutely sure he is gone, and no one can try this again and cause even more pain.

Hope calls the DA's office and requests an exhumation order for the remains of Will Horton, due to the claims of his killer, so that DNA testing can be done to verify that Will is deceased, and she is told that it will take a couple of hours to get the request processed, so everyone decides to wait at the station.

Lucas and Sami are climbing out of their skin, waiting to find out if their son is dead for sure, the idea that he could be out there somewhere for the past two years is unbearable. If he is alive, why wouldn't he have contacted someone, didn't he want to come home to them?

They know that at the time he was killed, that his life had become harsh and painful, and they could understand wanting to leave it behind, but even if he wanted to get away from everything else, he would never abandon his daughter.

She was the most important thing in the world to him, he was willing to give up the love of his life so that he would have his daughter in his life. He would never just leave her, and not have any kind of contact with her.

Once they exhume the body, they will need to have DNA taken from the remains so that it can be tested against Will's sample which is on file at the hospital. Finally, they will have proof that their son is really gone, and this heartbreaking nightmare can end.

Finally, they receive the call telling them that the order has been signed, and the paperwork is faxed over to Hope's office allowing the exhumation, Hope and Rafe arrange for two of Salem PD's techs to accompany them to the cemetery to collect the samples needed for testing.

Sami and Lucas insist on going to the cemetery with them to see the casket being dug up, but Rafe tries to talk them out of this idea, however neither he or Hope can convince them to stay at the station. He knows that the reality of seeing the grave disturbed and the casket removed and opened to allow for the sample collection will be incredibly hard for them to deal with seeing.

He tells them that they can't guarantee that they won't see Will's decomposing body when the casket is opened, and this is an image they don't want to have of their son, that they should remember what he was like before he was buried.

He admits to them that he can't stand the thought of seeing the body of the young man he considered to be like a son. However, they can't be persuaded to let the PD handle this and bring the information back to them.

After hearing that Sami and Lucas are going to the cemetery, the rest of the group insist on going with them as well. Rafe and Hope look at each other, and know that this is the worst possible idea, but they can't get any of them to stay behind. They know that even if they think that they can handle this now, the reality will be quite different.

Especially, if any of them see the remains, that they will be unable to deal with the image that they will have forever in their heads of the young man that they had all cared for, even if at the end of his life, things had been bad because of his actions that last year.

Sonny says that he needs to know for sure that Will is gone. He can't deal with the thought that Will might have been out there all alone for the past two years, in god knows what kind of mental condition, and if so, why didn't he come home to them all, or to him?

They head to the cemetery, and Rafe insists on helping dig up the coffin himself, he feels he it owes it to Will. They get the casket up on the side of the grave, the tech starts to open it with a crowbar, he pops the lid, and looks in to determine the state of the remains.

He wants to see if there is any viable tissue for a DNA sample, and to get ready to collect it, so that they can rebury the remains as quickly as possible, out of respect for the deceased and let the poor man rest in peace again.

The tech is shocked by what he sees, or he should say, what he doesn't see in this case! The casket is empty, well to be precise, there is no body, there are weights inside the casket that simulated the size of an adult male body, in an effort to make it seem like there a real body in there.

He bends over to doublecheck that what he thinks he is seeing is real, that he's not hallucinating. He gasps loudly, and he calls Hope and Rafe over right away. They ask if he has gotten the needed samples so that they can put the casket back, and he says no.

There is a problem. They ask if the body was too badly decomposed to be able to retrieve a sample. He says that's not the problem. There is no body in the casket, and it doesn't look there was ever a body in the casket. He tells them that it was filled with weights to make it seem like the body was there.

However, there are no biological samples in the casket, that the interior area is pristine, and that it doesn't seem like a dead body was ever in there. There is nothing available to test. He's sorry but they can't do any tests.

Rafe and Hope stare at him in shock, and go to examine the coffin for themselves, and they see what he is talking about, there are several weight bars in the casket, about equal to what Will weighed, so that when the casket was moved, people would believe a body was in there.

They move back after they have seen for themselves that the tech was correct, they are in disbelief, Will's body is not in the coffin. Where is it? Sami calls out to them, asking them are they done yet, her son deserves to be back at peace. Can they please put his casket back now that they have the samples?

Hope and Rafe head over to let Lucas and Sami know that there is a problem, a big problem, there is no body in Will's casket. That to be truthful, there doesn't look like a body had ever been in that casket, and that there are weights in it to simulate the body.

Sami freaks out when she hears this, she screams out where is my son's body? We saw him in the morgue, he was dead, he was not breathing, and he was cold to the touch. We said goodbye to him in that room, and he was not alive. What happened to his body? How did they lose him, and why weren't we informed?

When the rest of the group hears this, they come running, they had been standing back from Sami and Lucas, trying to give them some privacy, even though Sonny wanted to be closer to them, but he knew that they did not want him around.

After the way things had ended with him and Will, with Will dying before they could fix things between them, and him now being with Paul, they had made their feelings clear about that, and he could understand their reactions.

For them, he was betraying Will's memory by moving on with Paul, and he wonders if they would have had such a problem with anyone else, were their feelings the way there seemed because of his past with Paul, and what happened when between them when he first came to town, and how everything ended.

Sami goes on and says, "What about the autopsy report? It would show what happened, and where they sent him for burial, perhaps the medical examiner's office sent him to the wrong funeral home, they could have fooled up the paperwork, it's possible that his body went to the wrong place, and we need to find out where his body is now, so that we can get him moved to his rightful grave and resting place."

Rafe tells Sami, "Sami, there wasn't an autopsy performed, because cause of death was obvious, you could see the strangulation marks on Will's neck, I saw them while we were waiting for the paramedics to get there.

The ME came to the scene while we were waiting for the coroner's assistant to come take his body to the morgue so that you could identify him, and so the body could be released for burial. The ME just confirmed that Will was dead, and the body was released to the funeral home for preparation for the funeral. We never saw it again. Remember, you had requested a closed casket.

Lucas, "Call the ME and ask him to doublecheck his paperwork, we need to find our son's body. We don't want to cause any trouble for him, we just need to find out where Will is, and get his body back and put in his proper grave."

Rafe, "The ME retired at the end of that month, and moved out of town right after that. We didn't have a forwarding address for him, he said that he needed to get away from the death and pain he saw everyday.

We found out that he had committed suicide a few months after he left town when the authorities contacted the town to inform us of the fact because we were listed as his last employer. So, unfortunately, we can't question him about Will's case."

Sami, "Can't somebody from the police department check the paperwork, surely that is allowed, isn't it? We can get the answers ourselves from the paperwork, and can get Will back here where he belongs, right?"

Hope, "It was discovered after he retired that there were gaps in the paperwork, it didn't show up right away, because it took a few weeks to fill the position, we were depending on the coroner from the next town over, to cover any autopsies we needed completed during that time.

So, after the new ME took over, she went through all the old paperwork to familiarize herself with all the cases, and found out that he hadn't been completing his paperwork in the proper manner. We discovered that most of his paperwork for the last two years is missing large chunks of information.

While we have tried to get as much of the paperwork backfilled as much as possible, it was not possible for every case and Will's was one of the cases that we couldn't find all the information so that the file could be closed properly.

We tried to get the information from the funeral home, but a couple of months after Will passed, there was a huge fire that destroyed the document storage area where all the backups of the files for the funerals that they have carried out since they have been in business were being held. It was burned to the ground, and everything was incinerated.

All their records were all destroyed, and the problem is that they had just started to make electronic copies of their files. However, they had started with the oldest because they were the most fragile, and were working their way to the most recent files, like I said, the whole area was destroyed, even the computer backup storage devices, they weren't stored in a fire safe box, just in with the other documents.

John, "Well, what about the funeral home itself, surely their office has a current copy of the file on their computer system, at least some information?"

Rafe, "There was a break in about a month before the fire occurred, and their computer system was stolen, and all their records were gone, but they weren't worried, because they had backups of all the file in the storage unit, until the fire a month later. So, the funeral home's records were completely destroyed, and because of this there is no way to confirm that Will was ever there."

Sami, "So, you are telling us that there is no way to prove that my son is dead, and where his body really is? This is unbelievable, how could no one have noticed that the ME wasn't completing his paperwork the way it should be done?

Aren't there rules in places to make sure this doesn't happen? What about the staff in the Medical Examiner's office, why didn't they say anything to someone who could have fixed this issue?"

Rafe speaks up, "Well, there were only two staff members, the coroner's assistant who helped move the bodies from the scenes, and helped out with autopsies, and the administrative clerk. They were both devoted to him, and we discovered out afterwards, because they left shortly after the ME retired, that they were his wife and son.

The son used the mother's maiden name, and she used her mother's maiden name when they applied for the positions, so that no one would know that they were related. Unlike the police department, their office doesn't allow anyone who are involved or closely related to work together.

Due to the fact that the whole office left at once, Abe had to fill all three positions at once, so it took a while to get the office back up and running, and when it was, the ME discovered what had been happening with the paperwork, and the fact that his staff had been covering for him.

We have been searching for them, especially after we were informed of his suicide, but it's like they have disappeared off the face of the earth, we have been looking but cannot find a trace of them anywhere.

At this point, we think they are both dead as well, because there has not been any activity with their bank accounts, their credit cards, and their passports have not been used, and no new driver licenses have been issued in their names.

She has been trying to get everything straightened up since then, but a few of the people that passed shortly after Will, their paperwork has been fooled up as well, apparently, they were all sent to the same funeral home as Will."

Lucas, "Can't the funeral directors at the home reconstruct the paperwork?"

Hope, "We tried that route, but they didn't complete the paperwork themselves, they had an office manager who took care of all of the day to day details and completed all the documents needed for the funeral home.

He has left since then, he was offered a fantastic job in Hawaii, with a huge raise, and he wouldn't be working at a funeral home anymore. Who could blame him? Not that he got to enjoy it for very long, he was killed in a house invasion about a year ago, along with his whole family, it was brutal."

Sonny, "So, you are telling us that there is no one left who has any pertinent knowledge as to where Will could be? That's impossible, it's also insane, it sounds like someone wanted to make sure that no one could ever find any legitimate proof of Will's death one way or the other.

It seems like it was done on purpose, like a huge coverup, but why would someone do that, what possible reason could they have to do all this in regards to Will's death. Who would want to do that to Will's family? "

Sami, "I agree with Sonny, it's insane, we need to know where our son is, we need proof that Will is gone. I can't believe that I am saying this, but I think we need to go to Memphis. We need to go to this club, hopefully we can meet this young man, explain the situation as it is to him, and hope that he will agree to give us a DNA sample so that we can at least rule out that he is Will.

He is going to think we are insane, but hopefully we can get him to understand the situation and get him to agree to our request. Can you imagine the look on his face when a group of strangers come up to him and then tell him that he is a dead-ringer for their late relative?

Then one of us must ask him if we can please have some of your DNA to prove you are not him; because we just discovered that his body is missing two years after he was murdered. He will think we have just escaped from psychiatric facility, and I wouldn't blame him, it does sound insane."

Lucas, "We need to get there as soon as possible, but the main problem will be getting into the club so that we can meet him and talk to him, and request the DNA sample. We need to see about getting a membership so that we can get in, from what it seems like, it is extremely exclusive. Too bad we don't know any members of the club, they could get us in as guests.

I just thought of something, Mom or Andre might know someone, I am going to call her and explain the situation, you know that she will do this for us, and for the chance to know for sure about Will, so that we will know that he is gone or not. Mom has business contacts all over the country, so she should have some in Tennessee."

Sonny speaks up and says, "I'll call Uncle Vic, he may know of someone who is a member as well, he will do this for me, even though he wasn't very fond of Will at the end."

Sami, "Fine, ask him, but I don't think he will do it, just to spite me."

While this is going on, Lucas has called his mother, and explained the situation, and tells her that they have discovered that Will's grave is empty, and due to a set of very suspicious circumstances, that there is no way to verify that Will is dead. He tells her of everything they just learned that has happened since Will died.

Kate, "I agree, I find it hard to believe that all of this has happened since Will was murdered, and that none of it is connected. It's almost like someone wanted us to think that Will was dead and buried when he wasn't, but why, who would do something so cruel to all of us?

I will check with my business colleagues from down that way, and see if anyone is a member, and if they are, I will ask them to arrange guest memberships for whoever is going to Memphis, so that you can all get into the club, and meet this performer, the young man who you said looks just like Will, Lucas, does he really look that much like Will, really?"

Lucas, "Mom, he could be Will's identical twin brother, I couldn't see any difference in the picture in the article and Will, they looked exactly like each other, it was hard to see someone with Will's face looking out of the picture, looking so happy and healthy, so alive, to be honest."

Kate, "Can you handle seeing someone, maybe talking to someone who looks that much like Will, and who is alive and well. What will you do if he doesn't agree to do the DNA test, can you handle not knowing for sure? Or is it going to destroy you and Sami even more?"

At the same time, Sonny calls his uncle Victor, and tells him what they have found out. Victor is just as suspicious of the series of events as everyone else that day, he may not have been fond of or even liked Will Horton if he is honest, but after being killed, he figures that even Will deserves to rest in peace.

The first thought of who could have done this that occurs to him is Stefano. God knows that he had done so many other evil things to the Brady's and Marlena over the years. Sonny explains to him about seeing the picture of the performer in Memphis

How he looks identical to Will, and he explains the plan to head to Memphis, trying to find the performer and asking him for a DNA sample so that they can have proof that he is not Will. He then asks him if he knows anyone who is a member of the club Black Velvet.

Victor tells Sonny that he thinks that Deimos might have been a member, he remembers seeing the name of the club mentioned in Deimos' papers after he died. He says that he doesn't know if the club is aware of Deimos having passed away.

He tells Sonny that he will check with the club, and see if the group of them can get into the club under Deimos' membership, and he tells Sonny that he will need a complete list of names to give the club if they agree to let them in.

Sonny tells the other that Victor thinks that he might be able to get them in, and he needs to know who wants to get into the club, Sami says she is going, and Lucas agrees with her, Sonny is going, so of course Paul says he will as well. John and Marlena also say that they want to be included, and so do Justin and Adrienne.

Sonny tells Victor that all eight of them want to get in if possible. Victor agrees, and he tells Sonny that he will call the club right away, and he will get right back to him, as soon as he gets an answer from the club.

They are stood around the cemetery just waiting to hear back from Victor, they are in too much shock to think of even leaving there until they hear about the club. Around ten minutes after Sonny spoke to Victor, his uncle calls him back.

Victor tells him that he has arranged for them all to have a temporary guest membership for the club, and that it is good for a month. Sonny thanks his uncle and when he hangs up, he tells the rest that Victor has gotten them access to the club.

They are glad to hear this, and John tells them that he will charter a plane to get them to Memphis as soon as possible, so that they can get this put to rest, and Will can be in peace. He tells them they should all go and pack a bag for a few days, on the off chance that they cannot meet the performer right away.

He tells them to get to the private plane terminal at the Salem airport when they are ready, and that as soon as they are all there, and have clearance that they will fly to Memphis, they all agree with him and go to get their separate ways to get ready, and they meet up at the terminal in under an hour, and board the plane for their flight, each lost in their own thoughts about what they will soon see.

Their takeoff is delayed when Justin receives a call from Steve, and he finds out that the woman who is with them is not Adrienne, but Bonnie Lockhart, and that she has been impersonating Adrienne, as soon as they hear this, and once they have her detained, the police arrive and take her into custody.

While everyone on the plane are waiting for the police to arrive, they are stressed out at the latest thing that has happened. At the same time Justin is wanting to get to Statesville along with the police so that Bonnie can be put back into prison, and Adrienne can be released. Kayla has brought some clothes and toiletries for Adrienne so that she can get out of the prison clothes and feel more like herself again.

On the plane, the rest of the group are shocked, because none of them had known it wasn't really Adrienne, sure, she had acted weird a few times, but not anything to make them believe that she was being replaced by a double.

Sami is quieter than anyone has ever seen her, and Marlena is concerned. She goes to sit down with Sami, and she asks Sami if she is okay. Sami says no, that while she wishes this young guy in Memphis could be Will, but she knows that it can't be him.

She says this is because she and Lucas saw him in the morgue, and that she had touched his hand and kissed his forehead, and when she did this that he felt cold to the touch. She said that Will was not moving or breathing then, and he was cold when she touched him.

Will is gone, and she doesn't think that her heart could handle losing Will all over again. She breaks down in Marlena's arms, and Lucas comes over and takes her into his arms, because he knows exactly how she is feeling.

It was hard enough the first time that they had to face that Will was dead, and now this, they must do it again, and have to see someone that looks just like their dead son, god, the thought is so painful. He just wishes that Adrienne and Justin could get there, so that they could go do this and come back home and grieve for Will again.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own any part of Days of our Lives, but all Memphis characters are mine.

Please read and review. Reviews are like good chocolate, always savored.

Slow Southern Style – Chapter 2

Finally, Justin and Adrienne arrive at the plane and board. The pilot starts getting ready for takeoff and everyone takes their seats and buckle in until they can take them off. The plane lifts in the air, and they are on their way to Memphis to see Will's double and try to get a DNA sample.

Sami starts to sob again thinking about this, and Lucas takes her in his arms. Adrienne doesn't look happy when she sees this, but she is trying to understand what they are going through and be supportive.

Honestly, though she's not even sure that she still wants to be with Lucas, because she is feeling something for Justin since she saw him at the prison, and he got her released. She looks over at her son, and sees that Sonny looks excited but scared at the same time.

Sonny is sat there thinking that if it really is Will, then he can make things right with Will the way he planned to before Will was murdered. That would be fantastic, but where would that leave Paul. He loves him, but if he had the chance to be with Will again, who would he want to be with more, who would he choose, how can he choose?

He loves both of them, how could he hurt one of them. He would have to make a choice, he knows this, but what would he do, who does he love more? Could he reconnect with Will, and then just go back to Paul, would that be fair? He doesn't know what to think, what will he do?

He doesn't want to hurt anybody but if this is really Will, he will have to make a decision that he is not ready for, a decision that he never thought he would have to make and that is freaking him out completely, his husband was murdered, and he attended the funeral, his heart breaking at the time! Now is it possible that Will wasn't really dead, and he somehow ended up in Memphis. If it is, how did he get there?

Paul is freaked out, he finally thought he was getting Sonny, and that nothing could come between them once Will was gone. Not that he wanted Will to be dead, but after they thought that he had been murdered, Sonny was free to be with him after he mourned Will.

He knows that Sonny loved Will desperately, but how does Sonny feel now, if Will is alive, is he going to lose Sonny to his husband? Paul wants to know who Sonny loves more, he knows that Sonny loves him, but to be honest, he always felt like he was a replacement or second choice for Sonny.

He thinks that if this guy is really Will, then he will lose Sonny to the man who was and is the love of Sonny's life. Will Paul be able to handle that? He knows that Sonny was having doubts before the wedding, even though he told Paul he wasn't, it was obvious to him.

He wonders now who was Sonny thinking of during Abby's vows when he had tears on his face? Paul decides that he isn't going to pressure or guilt Sonny into staying with him, it wouldn't work anyway. If it is Will, his family is going to want him to come home, and he would always be around.

So, it would mean that Sonny would still have all his feelings for Will, even if he tried denying them, it would just end up destroying them anyway. Paul feels that this may be a sign, a huge one, that he and Sonny may not be meant to be together.

Even if they don't stay together, he can't begrudge Will being alive, he knows how happy his family will be, and Ari would have her father back! If it turns out that this guy is really Will, and Sonny wants to be with him, it will hurt but he will try and be gracious and wish them the best.

Thinking back over the past three years, Paul realizes now that he did all the chasing, that he was the one who pushed for them to be together before Will died and especially when Sonny came home from Paris for good.

Also, if he is being honest with himself, he had interfered in their marriage long before he and Will had sex, and had caused some of the problems in their marriage, he chased Sonny, and he flirted with him constantly, trying to get Sonny to want to be with him again.

The funny thing is that he knew that Will truly loved Sonny, so why did he cheat on him with Paul? His actions would change in a heartbeat, could there have been something wrong before Will died that made him act that way?

It was like he had a split personality the way he would go from being so nice and sweet to so cold and calculating, take the time he tried to blackmail Paul and his mom into leaving town? From everything that he had heard about Will before he came to town, this was not who Will was or how he behaved.

Rafe had said earlier that there had not been an autopsy performed, so it's not like there could have been anything found then? Paul decides that he needs to talk to Sonny and the others what he has just been thinking about for the past few minutes.

Paul speaks up, "Hey everyone, can I get your attention for a minute? This might sound like it's coming out of left field, but ever since Ben crashed the wedding, obviously I haven't been able to think about anything else since then. I knew before the wedding that Sonny was still in love with Will, and I had made my peace with it, because Will was gone.

Thinking back now, I know that I pushed for a relationship with Sonny before I should have. I did interfere in their marriage, and even after Will started acting out, I know now that he was just trying anything and everything he could do to fix their marriage.

The whole time I kept going after Sonny, even after I told Will that I wasn't but that's not true. Sonny also told him that he would give him a chance to make things right, but he didn't, he would spend time with me instead.

I realize now that my actions pushed Will into doing some of the things he did, which were wrong, but he was desperate, and desperation can cause you to act crazy, we all know that. A thought just occurred to me now.

My question is why did Will cheat in the first place, we all know that he truly loved Sonny. Look at his behavior before the cheating scandal became public and after, had any of you ever see Will act that way before, the way he could turn on the change of a dime.

He would change from being the kind sweet guy I met when he first started to interview me into like his own evil twin. I have to wonder if something was causing this behavior? During this time, was he ever checked out to see why he was acting so out of his normal character?

Could he have had a brain tumor or something like that, I know that I have heard of people with tumors acting like that, going from one extreme to another in the blink of an eye. To be honest, I was too busy trying to get Sonny, and some of you were telling me to go for it.

At that time, I didn't care what Will was doing, as long as it pushed Sonny to me I didn't mind, because it was making me look better to Sonny. I never even thought about how it was hurting Will, and let's be honest, it had to hurt Will that Sonny was willing to forgive the guy his husband had slept with, but not his husband. That was crazy, but I went with it, because it worked in my favor.

Another thing is that I chased Sonny around town when he came back to town for Will's funeral, and he wasn't exactly pushing me away, and for god's sake, we even made plans on top of Will's just buried grave, which now looking back at it, was so terrible and disrespectful.

I don't like the way I acted, but I figured that all's fair in love and war, and at the time I thought it was fine. Sonny was acting like he wanted to be with me, so why not? However, I have been thinking since the wedding ended so abruptly the other day.

I realize that I was trying to get back what I had lost when I refused Sonny's proposal in San Francisco, and I thought that I could just come to Salem, and get you back, not caring about your life, and who you were with.

I love you, Sonny but having had the last couple of days to think, I know that I was trying to relive our old relationship like you had wanted us to do in San Francisco, out and in public, because we never had a real relationship before.

That we were always hid away in hotel rooms, never having a chance to be together in public, and to be proud of our relationship. Then when I came to Salem, when I knew for sure that my career was over, I wanted that, and I figured that I should have the right to be with you, even though you were married to Will.

In my mind, he was your second choice, because you had proposed to me first, and I believed that you had settled for him, because I wouldn't come out for you. I know that was wrong, but thinking that allowed me to go after you without feeling guilty for interfering in your marriage, and causing Will to feel like he was losing you to your first love.

I persuaded myself that you didn't really love him, because you didn't fight to save your marriage after the cheating scandal, but you were fine with being around me all the time. That's not true, but I realize now that you could spend time with me, because it didn't hurt, because you didn't love me the way you loved Will.

That the reason you didn't spend time with Will, was because you hurt every time you saw him, and thought about how he had betrayed you, and I do believe that you wanted him to hurt when he would see you hanging out with me, but never him.

As much as I love you and think the world of you, I am not really in love with you anymore. I figured that we had to be together, and that after everything had happened, that it meant we were supposed to be together, but we weren't, and we aren't, and I think you know that yourself?

We both hurt Will, and that is on us, he got dragged into our past relationship that was never finished and had no closure, and I tried to relive it, not caring how it hurt him. I can only hope that if it is Will, I can make it up to him, because he is a good guy, who definitely deserved better than he was treated by everyone.

Will is the love of your life, you are still in love with him, and I know you were having doubts before the wedding, but I wanted my dream relationship so much that I ignored it? If Will is alive, you at least need to work out your feelings for Will, and I do truly believe that you two are meant to be together.

He is the one of a kind love that everyone hopes to find in their life, and you had it with Will before I came along. I want to find that kind of love for myself, and I do know you love me, but your feelings for me are nothing like the way you felt about Will, and still feel about him, and after all this time and the pain and suffering we caused ourselves and especially Will, I am ready and can finally accept that.

I hope that we can still be friends after this, but I know that I can't be with you anymore, Sonny. We both need to be with our one true love, you have yours if this is Will, and I pray for your sake, and the rest of his family, that is it him. I know that I need to find mine.

Once I do, hopefully Will can see that I am not trying to get you back anymore, and we can be friends again. It will take a while for him to trust me, and I can't blame him for that. I did tell him before that I wouldn't interfere with your relationship, but I went out of my way to spend time with you, knowing how it made him feel.

Everyone on the plane looks at Paul in shock when he is finished speaking, they realize that after hearing what he said, that Will really did have a reason to be paranoid about Paul in the past, and that no one had believed or supported him, that Paul did deliberately try to come between Will and Sonny, and try to get Sonny for himself at the time.

Sonny, "Paul, are you sure about this? I don't want to feel like I am forcing your hand, I do love you, you know. I don't want to hurt you."

Paul, "Yes, Sonny, even if we had stayed together, you would always be drawn to Will, and none of us would be happy."

Justin, "Paul, you do realize that there is no proof that guy in Memphis is Will? What about then, wouldn't you want to be with Sonny then?" 

Paul, "No, Justin, I realize now that Sonny and I needed closure on our past relationship, and now we have that. At this point, we are better off as friends, I know in my heart, that we don't belong together any more.

We really were just trying to recapture our past, and while our time together was great, it's over now, that part of our relationship. If we had been able to be open in the first place, I believe that our relationship would have run its course naturally.

That's obvious to me, because when I said no to Sonny's proposal, he ended our relationship and left San Francisco pretty much right away; but when Will turned down his first proposal, he waited until Will was ready to get married. There is your proof. Sonny knew that he needed to be with Will, that Will was the man he was meant to spend the rest of his life with as his lover and his husband.

I will always be grateful for the time I had with Sonny, but I now know that we are only meant to be friends, nothing more. Our relationship was great but sometimes it felt like best friends who were dating but not really that into each other, the physical side was good, but it felt like there was something missing. Sonny, if he is honest, will agree."

Sonny goes to Paul, and hugs him and gives him one last sweet kiss, but there is no passion behind it. He is happy that Paul won't be hurt, because he has to admit that everything Paul has said is true, but he just didn't want to face it.

If he is honest with himself, that he had caused so much pain for Will during that time in Salem, and for something that wasn't meant to be, that he had let lingering feelings for an ex wreck his marriage to the love of his life. They sit down, and John asks him what he meant about Will's behavior.

Paul, "I am wondering now if Will was sick, if he had a tumor or something?"

Marlena, "Or something else, oh my God, John, what if somehow Will had a chip implanted?"

Paul, "Marlena, what are you talking about? Why would Will have a chip? What do you even mean by that? What would a chip do?"

Marlena, "Well, years ago, there was this doctor who worked for Stefano DiMera, he created these behavior modification chips. They could cause an angel to act like a devil, and they wouldn't be able to stop themselves."

Paul, "Marlena, that's insane. People's behavior can't be controlled like that!"

John, "Yes, son, they can. Rolf implanted those chips in both me and Hope, and turned us into the Pawn and Princess Gina. For months, he controlled us, and made us believe that we were madly in love, and that we were loyal servants of Stefano. He had us doing everything Stefano wanted, without even thinking about the consequences. I an so lucky that I am not in prison for some of the stuff that I did during that time."

Paul, Sonny, Justin and Adrienne just look at John in surprise and disbelief.

Lucas can see that they are sceptical and tell them, "What John is saying is true, John and Hope were convinced that they were those people and that they were in love with each other. They took off together and were responsible for some very bad things happening.

They almost went to prison for what they did, it was only when the authorities captured Rolf, and they were able to shut the controls off for the chips that John and Hope were able to come back to themselves again. Their lawyer was able to prove that they were being controlled when they did a demonstration in the courtroom."

Sonny, "You do realize that this sounds completely insane, don't you?"

Justin, "Oh my god, I remember hearing about this from Victor, he told me about the chips. It sounded like science fiction."

Adrienne speaks up, "Marlena, even if this doctor implanted a chip in Will, he still died. Wouldn't that have caused the chip to stop working after his death, right?"

Marlena, "If Rolf did chip Will, there might be a good reason as to why there was no body in the grave."

Sami, "No, Mom, you don't mean", Marlena cuts her off.

Marlena, "I think he might have resurrected Will after he died!"

Sami, "No, Mom, that monster couldn't have done that to my son."

Paul, "Marlena, it's not possible to bring someone back from the dead. The stress of everything must be getting to you."

John, "Son, she's not imagining anything. Dr. Rolf has been able to bring people back from death in the past, he brought me back. I was dead, and he brought me back after I had been pronounced dead. It was real, and it happened to me.

It's quite possible that he took Will on Stefano's orders. He would do anything for Stefano, he was devoted to Stefano, plus Stefano funded all his insane experiments, they wanted to push the boundaries of what it was possible for the human body to do."

Sonny, "Why would Stefano do this?"

Marlena, "He's been trying to destroy the Brady family and me for decades. Taking Will would hurt us all, he is my grandson, and a Brady grandchild, Stefano would be able to strike at both of us at once. He would have known how much pain that it would cause all of us.

Nothing would give him more pleasure, especially after Kristen died, he blamed me for living instead of dying like Kristen wanted when she tried to kill me. After her death, his desire to destroy me turned to hatred, and he vowed revenge on me, he blamed me for her death after she fell to her death.

As well, after EJ's death, he blamed Sami for leaving town and taking the kids to California, and since Will helped her get set up there, he may have wanted revenge on Will for helping to take his grandchildren away from him."

Just then Sami's phone rings, and it's Rafe calling to let them know that Hope has contacted the Memphis PD, and they are willing to meet with them the following day, and that they are willing to help them in their search.

Their departmental liaison will be their contact with the Memphis PD. His name is Adam Oxford, he is one of their top detectives, and he will meet them the following day, the Memphis PD have promised that they will give them all the assistance they need for their search for the Will lookalike.

They decide to see what they can find out at the club itself tonight; they have been told that it is very high class, so when they land, they go to their hotel and change into nice dressy clothes so that they can get into and fit in at the club.

They get to the club, and they tell the greeter that they are temporary guests of the club, that their entry is courtesy of Deimos Kiriakis. They are told that this is a private club, so they are not allowed to take photos or videos, and that they are to respect the other members and guests that they may meet that night.

They are informed that this is a high-end gentleman's club, but they also have entertainment for ladies as well, and that there is a mixed area for everyone to enjoy also. They are then told that their star performer is appearing in the mixed area tonight, and that they in for a special treat.

After they are told this, they have realized that Black Velvet is a high-end strip club, and they wonder what in god's name would Will be doing here? This is proof that it can't be Will, he would never have the nerve to strip in public.

Will was too shy, they all know that he hardly ever even went shirtless in Salem. They know that this guy can't be their Will, but they still must check it out. They go into the mixed area, and select two tables together right in the front of the stage. The room is full of people all dressed up for a night of fun on the town.

Within a few minutes, the lights start to dim, and their MC comes out to introduce the star of the show, and the audience starts to cheer and they all clap. The MC starts to speak and get the audience in the right mood for the show they are about to see.

MC, "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, the star of our show, the sexy Xander who will make you wish that you could have him for your very own. Remember the rules, you can look all you want but you cannot touch.

The only exception to this rule is if you get to be the lucky audience member or members that he may choose to make part of his act, and he is the one who decides who the lucky people will be." As the MC finishes his spiel, a single spotlight shines on the center of the stage.

They can see a figure in the middle of the spotlight, and he has his back turned to the audience, and is dressed in a tuxedo and a fedora. They must admit that it is very classy and elegant, not what you would expect a stripper to be dressed like.

The music starts, and the song they hear is You Can Leave Your Hat On, and the figure begins to sway in time to the beat of the music, hips moving sexily. He slowly turns around, and his face can be seen, and he really is the spitting image of Will.

He slowly starts to dance forward moving towards the audience, removing his jacket and slinging it over his shoulder as he moves towards a member of the audience, when he reaches her, he slides to his knees before the table.

He lays the jacket there, he pulls her out of her chair, and pulls her close to him, and slowly sways in time to the music, before he twirls her back into her seat. He gets up then and dances away from the table, and towards the other side of the floor.

He goes to another table where one of the men sitting there gladly help him take off his shoes and his tie, which was hanging opening around his neck. He smiles at the man, and dances back away from the table, and towards a chair in the middle of the dance floor.

He uses the chair as a prop, spinning it so that the back of the chair is facing the audience, he sits down on it, and undulates back towards the floor swaying his body the whole while in time to the music, and then pulling himself back up again just from his core strength, he doesn't hold onto the chair, he just slithers back up again, and it looks so sexy.

He shimmies up from the chair, and removes his shirt and tosses it in the direction of their area, and it lands on Sonny's lap. He spins the chair around, then stands on it, and tips it forward, sliding to the floor.

Then as he does this, he pulls on the pants and they tear away, and he dances and spins the chair around the middle of the floor, and just as the song is coming to an end, he is stood there is tiny black briefs and his fedora only, and my god, does he look amazing, his body is completely ripped.

Sonny is wide eyed staring at Will's double and his mouth has gone dry, and Paul is pretty much in the same state. Sonny doesn't want to objectify the man who could be his husband, but oh my god, that was so hot.

He spins the chair, straddles it, and lays his head down on the back just as the last note of the song plays. The audience goes wild, and tips sheets are flying onto the floor. Now their group understand the reason that the slips are on the table, and what they are used for.

In this club, there is no tossing money at the dancers, and they are dancers not just strippers, it is almost like a burlesque show, the performances are very classy and tastefully done, but sexy at the same time. This is a high-class club, and so they show their appreciation for the entertainers in a refined manner.

The rest of the Salem group feel uncomfortable because they know that if this is Will, then they just saw more of him than his relatives are comfortable seeing, but they do have to admit that the performer did an amazing job, and he managed to appear to seem sexy and classy, not easy to be both when you are stripping.

They all fill out the forms, and hand them to the attendant who is going to the tables and collecting them for the performer from the members who do not feel comfortable tossing the slips like some of the other members have been doing, while a second attendant collects the slips from the floor.

The performer gathers his clothes, including his shirt from Sonny, and he flashes everyone at their tables a big smile, but they can tell that he doesn't know who any of them are, because it is the same smile he gives to the whole audience. Just before he leaves the dance floor, he turns and bows to the crowd.

The crowd goes wild, especially the man and woman that he had danced with as part of his act, and on his way out, they both stop him, and are talking very animatedly to him. Just as he is about to leave through the door on the side of the room, to change out of his costume, one of the male club members tries to catch his arm, but the performer moves away before he can touch him.

The member then beckons the young performer closer and asks him a question, and they can see that the performer is saying no to whatever the older gentleman is asking him, he is shaking his head no quite emphatically.

Then he then turns away from the man, and walks through the door to the backstage area. They can see that the man is not happy, he tosses money on the table, and he leaves. He goes out through a door near the backstage entrance.

Sonny, "I guess that member wanted a private show, but he got turned down, the star must not perform in private. Though this proves that this guy, while he looks incredibly like Will, is not Will. You know that Will would have passed out from shock and embarrassment at the thought.

He would have fainted at the thought of ever dancing like, he would have needed something before he could have done that routine. Not that my Will wasn't sexy enough to do it, but he was too shy to ever think about doing something like that in public."

All of them agree with Sonny, because Will would have been the color of a tomato if he tried to dance like that, he was too insecure and never thought that he would have been sexy enough to pull off a routine like that.

While they are waiting for an opportunity to speak to the Will lookalike, there is a huge commotion from backstage, and suddenly, they see the pushy member come running out of the dressing area followed by the performer, who is bleeding from a shallow cut on his chest, and the performer is chasing the member that had been trying to get the performer earlier and that it looks like he may have just attacked the performer.

Next thing they hear is the performer yelling, "Stop, Memphis PD, freeze"; they look at him and they are in shock and then the performer does a flying tackle and is taking down the club member who had tried to attack and kill the performer/undercover cop.

The now revealed undercover cop had been changing into his own clothes after his last performance when the member slipped into his dressing room and had tried to attack the dancer who had just refused his advances.

He did not like being turned down by a dancer, after all the dancer should be thrilled that he wanted to show him some attention; after all, he is wealthy and sophisticated, and he was willing to lower himself to be with this dancer; and this piece of trash dared to turn him down, well, he would have to pay for his insult to someone of a higher class, he would make sure of it.

How dare he think he was too good to put on a private show for him. He would show him what a mistake that was, like he had done to the others who dared to do the same thing. The club member didn't realize that the gorgeous young performer had been brought in as bait to catch him.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own any part of Days of our Lives, but all Memphis characters are mine.

Please read and review. Reviews are like good chocolate, always savored.

Slow Southern Style – Chapter 3

There had been a string of killings of young performers in Memphis, and the clubs had gotten together and had approached the police asking for their assistance. They had asked the police if they could send someone in undercover who fit the profile of the previous victims.

The youngest detective at Memphis PD had been asked if he would do this, and he had agreed to go undercover. He had said sure but that someone would have to teach him how to dance, because if he was doing it, he wasn't going to embarrass himself or the department.

They had started the undercover assignment over a month ago, and that was after the young detective had trained with the club's dancers for two solid weeks, for eight hours a day every day until he could move like he was a real dancer.

They told him that he already had the moves, they just had to refine them and teach him to dance for an audience. The clubs' dancers were happy to help train the detective because they were hoping that he could catch the person who had been killing their friends.

If he could find the killer, that then they would be safe, and not have to worry about being attacked themselves, plus he was so sweet and treated them so well, they loved the fact that he didn't loo down on them for what they did for a living.

He still kept an eye on his other cases but remotely from his apartment. They had decided that he wasn't going to take the chance of going to the station, just in case the suspect had someone watching him, they didn't want him to catch on, so he was working on his cases from home while linked into the police's computer system.

They wanted to get the killer's attention, so he was advertised as the hot new young star of the club. So far, no one but the police and the clubs themselves had connected the killings of the young dancers, so it made it easier for them to send their detective undercover on the case.

The clubs knew that if this information got out, that their dancers were being targeted by a serial killer, that it could ruin them and their reputations. The club had agreed that while the detective wouldn't be paid for his performances, that he could keep all the tips that had been given to him while he was dancing.

This had been agreed to by the mayor, DA and police commissioner, because they knew they were lucky that he had been so agreeable to taking this assignment, because they knew that they could not have forced him to work as a dancer. If they had tried this, then he could just go somewhere else to work. After all, thanks to his program and device, he could work anywhere.

They also knew that as the other detectives had put it, if he had to shake it for only god knew how long, that he deserved something for having had to do it, that going undercover as a dancer/stripper was not in their job description and that he would have to actually perform several routines a night.

One of the other detectives went through all the tip sheets each night, and they made sure that there was never a tip accepted from the suspect, any tips he made were put in a separate account so that they could be used as proof that he had been at the club.

This was done in case his defence attorney tried to say that he wasn't there, along with the video tapes from the security cameras at the club where he can be identified quite clearly, including the one in the detective's dressing room which caught the attack on tape.

Once they had the suspect's credit card number from Black Velvet, they were able to track his card to each of the clubs where the other murdered dancers had worked before they were killed. They have been able to build an airtight case against their suspect.

However, they wanted to catch him in the act, so their detective Adam and the other dancers created his alter ego, and sexy Xander was born and became the star of the show at Black Velvet, and sure enough the killer went after him, because they knew if he was shown attacking him on tape, how could the suspect say that it wasn't him.

They knew that after several refusals that he would go after their detective because each time he was refused, he got even more frustrated that he wasn't able to convince the hot young dancer to give him a private show.

They were sure that he would try to attack him soon, and they were ready, each night different detectives from their squad were in whatever area that their detective was performing in that night as backup if he needed it, they were always audience members who could be on hand quickly if needed, and Adam made sure to incorporate his fellow detectives into his act, instead of using actual customers.

He said that he found it less awkward that way, and they had even used some of his former academy classmates, as the undercover had been ongoing for over a month, and they didn't want the suspect to become suspicious if certain people were there multiple nights.

Their hunch was correct, and tonight was the night that they were finally able to arrest their suspect, and put an end to the rash of killings, and make the performers at the different clubs feel safe again, and know that no more of their friends would be lost to this madman.

Back in the mixed show area, everyone but the two people who had taken part in that night's show, were in shock. The very sexy dancer they just saw perform an amazing routine is actually a detective with the Memphis PD.

He was not a professional dancer as had been advertised, there was even a biography on the club's website telling about his dance experience, and they are shocked because he was so good, that they had believed him to be a real dancer.

They wonder was he a trained dancer before he became a police officer, he must have trained to be able to do what he had been doing for the past month, and they really can't believe it, he was so good when he was dancing, that everyone who had seen him dance had all thought that he really was a performer.

Then to find out that he isn't, that he is a detective, they are just staring at him in disbelief. Sami, Lucas and the rest of the group from Salem look on in shock as the person who they had come to meet, when they see he is not a dancer/stripper like they thought.

That he is a Memphis PD detective who was working undercover to catch a rapist or killer because they could see that he had been attacked by the suspect and had been injured, but he had still been able to capture him and take him down, that he was only doing this act as part of his police job. They are sure now that this man can't be Will, because their Will had never shown any interest in being a police officer, did he?

It can't be Will, he looked right at them and never even reacted, not even a flinch when he saw all of them together. Will isn't that good an actor, he would have shown some sign of recognition to at least one of them, especially seeing Sonny and Paul together at the same table.

They see the man who was made a part of the performance that night hand the young detective a set of handcuffs, obviously he is an officer as well, and the young detective slap them on the wrists of the suspect that he had just tackled to the floor.

The female officer makes a call, and within a couple of minutes, two more plainclothes officers come into the room, ready to take the suspect down to the station to be processed, but first they read him his rights, and verify that he understands those rights as they were read to him, and they then take him away.

The two officers who were already there, they start trying to check on the young detective, and are heard saying that he needs to get that stab wound checked out. He tells them that it is just a flesh wound, and he will get it checked out by their ME, and he can stitch it for him.

However, the female detective insists that he needs to go to the hospital to have it stitched and have blood drawn, just to make sure that there was nothing on the knife that the suspect used on him. He tries to argue, but his team override his objections.

He finally agrees to go, but first he apologizes to the audience for the fright they must have been given during the takedown of the alleged killer. He goes on to say to the audience that they hope that the surprise was not too much for anyone, and if it was, he wants to apologize.

He says to them, "By the way, you were a great audience for what turned out to be my farewell and final performance here at Black Velvet. I have to get back to my regular job, I have to say that it was a fantastic way to stay in shape though, so I will have to keep in practice."

The audience cries out their disappointment at this news. They have loved all his performances, and they don't want them to end any time soon. He tells them that for the next police fundraiser that he will try to talk his bosses and see if he can get them to agree to letting him dance.

He tells them that if he can get this approved, that if he does this and will dance for them again, they will all have to come to the fundraiser and bring their chequebooks. They all say yes, that they will, and he tells them that they will have make big donations to the charities that Memphis PD support because as they know, they are all such worthy causes.

Just then as the young detective is getting ready to go to the backstage area to finish getting dressed this time without any interruptions this time, or any attempts on his life, and he can go back to the station when one of his partners speaks up.

He says Fordie, get hopping, we need to get back to the squad room so that we can get the paperwork started, and we all know just how much you love the paperwork at the end of another successful takedown.

Sami hears the name of the young detective and she leaves her table and walks towards him before anyone can stop her. Lucas runs after her when he's not fast enough to stop her from getting up from the table.

He hears her ask the detective if he is Adam Oxford, the liaison detective for the Memphis PD. He says yes, and he asks her why she wants to know. Sami then tells him that her group is in Memphis and that they are supposed to meet with him the next day.

She tells him that they are looking for the department's help in finding her missing son, or someone who is an exact double for her son. He is very sympathetic to her, and so are his partners and fellow detectives.

Sami says to him that the only thing though is that they were looking for the police's help in assisting them in tracking down the star performer of the Black Velvet club, and they look at her like she is insane since they know that Adam Oxford was acting as the star performer for the last while.

They then figure she must be asking about a former dancer at the club. He asks her which of the previous club star performers she is looking for, that they will be glad to try and help her find her son, even though they don't think that the club had hired any underage dancers in the past couple of years, if ever, they were careful in making sure all the dancers were legal age.

They ask how old her missing son is, and ask her if he is still a teenager. She says no, that her son is almost twenty-five years old, and they just stare at her, and Detective Oxford tells her that she doesn't look old enough to have a son that age. She thanks him for the compliment and smiles sadly.

She tells them that she was a young teen mother when her son was born, that she was only fifteen when she had him. They are shocked, but not surprised, because there are a lot of teen mothers out there but at least she was able to keep and raise her baby.

She then tells them that they were trying to track down the performer that had been advertised for the club just recently. They tell her that the performer that she was trying to find was only a character for the undercover assignment that she and everyone else just saw end, when they had arrested the suspect in their case just a little while ago.

She tells them that she and her son's father as well as some other family members are trying to find the young man who was featured in the article in the Memphis Sentinel article that was just published recently advertising the club and their new star.

She explains to them that they had to meet the young man who was pictured in the advertisement for the club because he is a dead-ringer for her son, she pulls out her phone and shows them a picture of her and Will together, and they can see why the family wanted to meet their undercover detective.

Sami then tells them that to understand why they needed to meet him, they need to understand the story of her son, Will Horton and how he died, and what had been discovered in the last few days, and how it has rocked their world.

They ask her what she is talking about, because they were told that they were going to be meeting with a family regarding a missing person, and she tells them that due to what they found out the past few days, they believe that it might be possible that Will is missing, and not dead as they believed.

They look at her in pity, they are thinking that the stress of losing her son and dealing with the aftermath of his being murdered and grieving his death, that she has suffered a breakdown, and they want to help her but not feed into her delusional fantasy.

Even knowing that they may know important information on her son and their detective, but they need to investigate before they say anything, and they want proof that there could be a connection, so they are prepared to hear what she has to say, and see if it matches up with what they already know.

She explains that just over two years ago, her son was supposedly murdered by a serial killer in his home town of Salem, Illinois. However, a couple of days ago, his killer had escaped from the psychiatric facility where he was being held.

She adds quite sarcastically that he seems to do this whenever he wants, that's it not the first time he did it, and instead of taking off so that he wouldn't be captured, he instead had crashed a social event, and had told everyone there that Will was still alive.

Of course, they couldn't believe him, but he insisted that he knew Will wasn't really dead because he had seen his picture in the advertisement for Black Velvet, and he saw Will's picture with a star around his head on the sign outside the club.

They didn't believe him, but he showed them the article and they saw the picture for themselves, and it threw them for a loop of seeing Will's face string at them from the photo, they knew that Will was dead because she and his father had seen him in the morgue, and she had kissed his forehead, and he was cold and lifeless on the morgue table.

She admits that she attacked the man who taken her son away from her and tried to strangle him just like what he had done to Will, and that she had to be dragged off him. Apparently, she had scared the killer, and he had said that she was being mean and rude, according to him.

He kept insisting that Will was alive because of the article. However, considering some of the other things that had happened in Salem in the past, their family decided that they couldn't rule out the possibility without proofing to themselves once and for all that Will was gone, so they had his grave exhumed, and they were going to test the DNA of his remains.

They were doing this to just prove to themselves that he really was gone but they got a real shock when the casket was opened, because there was no body in it, and it looked like there may have never been a body in it, because there were weights simulating the weight of a slim adult male body.

After they discovered this, they then found out the paperwork from the ME's office was incomplete, and that the ME who had retired shortly after Will had passed was dead, and his family who were his staff in the office were missing.

She tells them that all the records and backups for the funeral home were missing or destroyed, and that the office manager for the funeral home was also dead, that he had left the funeral home later that same year, and he and his whole family had been killed in a home invasion just last year. She says that there is no way to prove that Will is gone, all the normal ways to prove it have been closed to them.

That they don't believe that it is possible that Detective Oxford is Will, but they need to know for sure, would he agree to a DNA test so that they would know that it is just a coincidence that he looks so much like their late son? She knows that it is an imposition but for the sake of Will's whole family, could he please do this for them?

They had decided to come to Memphis just to ask this stranger would he be willing to give them a sample of his DNA so that they could have proof that he wasn't Will, and that Will was gone, but god yes, they would love to have their son back, it would make all their dreams come true, especially for his little girl.

Will is dead though, and through a cruel set of circumstances, they don't even have his body anymore. They just need to know that he is gone and that it was only a lookalike in the picture, just to give themselves closure.

Detective Oxford and his fellow detectives look at Lucas, and say is this for real, is everything your wife has said true, did all of this really happen to your son? Lucas say yes, well, we aren't married anymore but we have just found out today that our son's body is missing, and it has sent us into a tailspin. We need answers not only for us, but for his brother and sisters, and his precious little girl.

First, we had to deal with that maniac coming back and telling us that our son was still alive, then to find out that there is someone who could be our son's identical twin alive and well in Memphis, and then after all that to discover that no one knows where Will's body is or how we can find it, so we can place him in his proper grave?

This day has been insane, and to be honest, I almost can't believe it myself, and I just lived through it. My son was probably the best friend I ever had, he was such a good kid, and I miss him every day, and the day we buried him, I buried part of my heart with him, and now it turns out that we don't know where he is anymore.

I really don't know how to deal with that idea? At least before, we could go to the cemetery and speak to his grave, and get some comfort that way, and now we have even lost that bit of feeling like we could have some contact with him when the pain got too bad.

That hurts like hell, to know that we don't even have that connection anymore. What do we tell Ari when she is older, and she wants to know where her daddy is buried, and we have to tell her that we don't know for sure?

The three detectives tell Lucas and Sami they need a moment to speak alone, and they walk away from them. They can see that Detective Oxford has a troubled look on his face, and the other detectives start talking to him with strange looks on their own faces as well. Sami and Lucas wonder what they are talking about that is making them look like that.

The detectives seem to finally come to a consensus, and they walk back to where Sami and Lucas are waiting. They tell them that they will meet their group tomorrow at 2 pm at the detective's squad room at the station on Plinking Street.

They explain that they need to get back to the station because they need to get the paperwork completed for their arrest tonight, that they want to be able to get the suspect processed as soon as possible, and then they can schedule the trial.

Sami doesn't want to wait, but Lucas agrees for all of them, and says that they will see them the next day at 2 pm. The officers leave the club as soon as they can, so Sami and Lucas go back to the others, and tell them of the plan to meet at the station the next afternoon.

Lucas tells them there was a strange moment when they were talking to the detectives, and that when Sami mentioned that their son died two years ago and the circumstances of how he died, that the three detectives got a little weird with them.

Sami calls Hope and Rafe to see if they can get any information on Adam Oxford for them before their meeting tomorrow. They say they will find out whatever they can, and pass it on to them, but they ask why they want information on the liaison officer who is going to be helping them find the performer they are looking for.

Sami then shocks them when she tells them that the liaison officer was the guy pictured in the ad, because he was the performer they were going to try and track down, and the one who was Will's lookalike. and they are shocked, and ask her why the detective had been shown on the club website, was he moonlighting outside the job.

Sami says no, that he was just pretending to be a dancer, and so that they had met the performer right away on the first night there at the club, and that they saw him in action, in both parts of his job. She tells them that he had been undercover on assignment.

He had finished that current assignment that night when they captured their suspect in the act after he went after the star performer after he had danced earlier. They were apparently trying to catch someone who was attacking performers in Memphis, and that he had been the bait for the suspect.

They said before this happened however, they had seen him dance, and that the club is a high-end strip club, and that she had just seen a man who looked just like her son, doing a very sexy dance routine and that was not what she had ever expected to see.

They all agree that Detective Oxford does have an uncanny resemblance to Will, but he had spoken to Sami and Lucas for an extended period, and there was not even one moment where he seemed to recognize them or anyone in their group.

They decide after this that they might as well go back to the hotel for the night because there is nothing else that they can do at the moment. When they get tot the hotel, they split up and John and Marlena go to their room, while the other six all have their own rooms.

Due to the fact that it would not be comfortable and because of the circumstances, Sonny and Paul are definitely not sharing a room. Since they had called things off that afternoon, it wouldn't feel right, and if Will heard that they had shared a room, he would not believe that Sonny truly wanted him back.

The fact is that truthfully nor do they want to stay in the same room now, they are truly and permanently parted, and they both know that they will never be together romantically ever again. However, if they did share a room, it would be hard to convince people that they don't still want to be together.

Especially the others in Salem who supported them being together since Paul had first come to town, and who don't want Sonny with Will, including Victor. They had never wanted him with Will, and will not be happy when he reconciles with Will, or at least he hopes that it will happen.

Can you imagine the idea, of the two father or mothers sharing a room, yeah, not happening, Lucas and Justin would not be able to share a room, and neither would Sami and Adrienne, talk about an awkward and uncomfortable situation, no thanks!

They all spend a restless night, just tossing and turning, and getting very little sleep, waiting for the next day when they can see the young detective again. Early the next morning, they are in the hotel's dining room eating breakfast when Rafe call Sami back with the information that she had asked him for the night before. Sami puts him on speaker so that they can all hear what he has found out.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own any part of Days of our Lives, but all Memphis characters are mine.

Please read and review. Reviews are like good chocolate, always savored.

Slow Southern Style – Chapter 4

Sami, "Rafe, what did you find out about this detective, Adam Oxford?"

Rafe replies to her question, "Well, Sami, the interesting thing is that I cannot find any information on Adam Oxford before two years ago. He showed up on the records for the Memphis Police Academy about sixteen months past, he excelled while he was at the academy and he graduated at the top of his class, and then was promoted to detective within six months of joining the force.

He has the highest closure and conviction rates for the department and possibly the country, and he is the youngest detective in the history of the department. Apparently, he has revolutionized their computer systems for them, and he has even gotten all the older officers and detectives trained to use the newest software and policing programs. They all love him and watch out for him, they all treat him like their little brother.

His closure and conviction rates are 98 percent. The couple of cases that were thrown out of court, or the suspects were acquitted were due to evidence handling errors or paperwork errors from the DA's office. He is currently being headhunted by departments all over the country. They all want him, and I found out that even Salem has sent him an offer, but we are still waiting to hear back from him.

The rumor is that he is some kind of computer genius, he has created search programs that have cut down their time needed looking for information on their cases to virtually nothing, and the programs are very advanced, they search automatically for all information on the individual or item once it is entered into the program, and it can find practically anything.

It's not hacking, the program is just so thorough that it doesn't miss even the smallest bit of information, and they can practically tell someone what they have done since birth. To be honest, we would love to get our hands on this program, it would work so well in helping us close a lot of the cases where we know what has happened, we just can't find the information to back it up.

The closure and conviction rates for the whole department have risen dramatically since he joined the force! There is some talk about the program being sold to other departments and agencies world wide and if this does happen, he is going to be immensely wealthy because every force is going to want to have this search program, but the criminals will hate it, they won't be able to hide anything anymore.

There is also talk about some revolutionary device that he has designed and created to keep track of prisoners; that this device will make it impossible for them to fool anyone and try to make them believe they are anyone but who they really are, but no one is talking about it yet.

If the device is as good as people are saying, he is going to be incredibly rich just from this alone because every police force and prison system is going to want to have it for all their prisoners, not just one version per jail or prison, but one for each suspect and convict.

Everyone there thinks he is great, and they don't want to lose him. They say he is changing the way policing works, and making it better with every concept he comes up with for them to use. I couldn't find out much about his personal life, but from what I did hear, it seems like he is gay, but no one has confirmed this or denied it, and I couldn't find anything about a boyfriend or partner, so I can't be sure of that fact.

Sami, "So where was he before he came to Memphis to go to their police academy?"

Rafe, "That's the really strange thing. There is nothing on record for him before he showed up in Memphis. It's like he just woke up one day and started a life there. We even thought that perhaps he had been in Witness Protection, but they would never let one of their charges become a police officer, and certainly not let them be advertised they way he was in that article."

Lucas, "So, there is nothing from the time before Will was killed, that's what you are saying. So, he could be Will, how though because he is so different from our Will. I can't picture Will taking someone down with a flying tackle, or stripping even for an undercover assignment, can you? You know what Will was like, can you see him doing that, either of those things?"

Rafe, "No, not really, but we know that Will was attacked, and deprived of oxygen to his brain, and that he was declared dead. If for some reason, he wasn't dead, then the lack of oxygen could have caused personality changes, and how he acts as well.

I asked Kayla about this, and she said that the lack of oxygen could have caused some damage that may have affected his personality and how he acts, that he would not be the same person he was before he was attacked; and that he could be suffering from psychological amnesia, or something she called retrograde amnesia.

She said that this means that all his memories from his previous life could have been wiped out of his memory completely, and that if it is this type of amnesia, they may never come back. That if this is true, the day he woke up after the attack, everything would be new to him.

It would mean that he would basically be starting over from scratch, with no memory of anyone or anything he had known from before whatever happened to him from the time he was attacked until he became conscious again, however long that was."

Sami, "Lucas, he was strangled to death or near death possibly. He went without oxygen for a long time, and who knows how that could have affected him. If it is Will, I think Rafe and Kayla are right, that he may have some form of memory loss, most likely retrograde amnesia.

He didn't recognize us last night, he was fine with us and he only got uncomfortable around us when we mentioned that our son had been supposedly murdered two years ago and that he was a lookalike for Will, and that we wanted him to give us a DNA sample to rule out that he was our son."

Marlena, "Oh my god, he might actually be Will, Sami. We need to get a DNA test done right away. If he is Will, we need to let him know about his life and Ari. She would be so happy to have her daddy back, she has missed him so much."

Sonny looks at all of them and says, "If it is Will, how is he going to take finding out that Paul and I were in the process of getting married when Ben crashed the wedding, and we heard the news that he might be alive, and that was the reason that we stopped the wedding.

He is never going to believe that I still love him and want him back, he will probably think or figure that I am coming back to him out of guilt, especially if he discovers what happened before Ben attacked him, and that we had been legally separated at that point, he might think that I had given up on him, and had moved on.

How do I explain that, the reason that I felt that way, that it was because he had cheated on me with Paul and the other things he did right before I went to Paris, and the hardest thing is how do I explain leaving him and our daughter behind when I took a job in another country?

I was so confused as to what I wanted at that time. Let's be honest, at that time, I wasn't exactly pushing Paul away when he was chasing me, I didn't cheat physically, but there were extremely strong and confusing feelings involved that went against our marriage vows, so I can't say that I was completely faithful either.

God, what a mess I made of everything and instead of fighting for my marriage, I just let it fall apart and then I left him alone to deal with all the fallout from both our actions, and I have heard about pretty much everything that was said to him, and I never once called anyone on their hypocritical behavior, not even when I came back for his funeral.

Even with what we are thinking now, about the possibility of a tumor or one of those chips you were talking about and that it was responsible for causing his erratic behavior during that time, he probably won't believe us about any of it because it sounds like something out of a science fiction show or story, the idea of some doctor being able to control people through chips implanted in their brains, right?"

Sonny looks at Paul and says, "No offence, but he probably won't believe you either, if you or I tell him that we were just trying to find closure or relive our old relationship, and that we weren't really in love with each other. How am I going to get my husband back, how can I make it up to him and prove that he is the one I love?

I never thought that I would have this chance, and now that I do, I don't know what to say to him and how to convince him that he is the love of my life. That I want to be with him only, that you and I are over for good and that it was a mutual decision.

That you are in fact fine with me being back with Will. Why would he believe us that we were able to go from almost getting married to just being friends in the space of a couple of days, that we were only together because after everything that happened and that we thought we had to be with each other?

According to what Rafe told us about that search program that he created, it must be something unreal because Rafe was practically salivating when he was talking about wanting to have it for the Salem PD. I am sure that he has found all about his past life.

Or as he probably sees it, Will Horton's life, and what it had been like before he was attacked and presumed to be dead, with all the problems and issues that he had been going through at the time in Salem.

Why would he want to come back to that life when it seems like he is very well liked and respected, and is in the process of building a great new life for himself here in Memphis in comparison to the life where he had been miserable for most of his last year in Salem, and was not treated well at all?

How do I convince him that I am not interested in the money that he is going to get when his search program and this prisoner security device are sold because you have to admit that it does seem convenient that we come looking for him around the same time that he will be coming into a huge amount of money?

I don't care about that, and I will sign anything he wants me to, because I have no rights to any of this as he created it while we were apart, and I wouldn't want it anyway, because it is due to him and his hard work.

I had nothing to do with it being created. I will sign away any rights as his legal spouse to the ideas or products that he has created so that I can prove it is him I want, not the money he will receive from his products.

I think all of you know that I buried a piece of my heart the day that I thought we had laid Will to rest, that I haven't been the same since that day. That I have changed a lot since Will died, and not for the better either, I have gotten colder and harder, that I am not the man he fell in love with, because a part of me was missing.

If I can get Will back, I think that I am going to ask him to attend marriage counselling with me so that we can work on the issues that caused all our problems the first time around. I want to do the therapy so that we can resolve those issues and get past them, so we don't face those problems again in the future.

It wasn't only Will with the issues at the time, I had them as well, but I refused to admit that I was in any way responsible for any of our problems then, and I put all the blame on him. I didn't want to admit that he had any reason to feel insecure about my friendship with Paul, that I dismissed his feelings and made him feel like he was wrong for how he felt during that time.

However, he did reason for how he felt, and even though how he behaved then was wrong, and now we know that he may not have been responsible for what happened, and honestly, I know that I pushed him to act like that.

To him, it must have been proof that I loved Paul more than I did Will, especially by spending all the time I did with Paul after the cheating happened. I would spend so much time with Paul but not a moment with Will.

I was wrong in how I acted as well, because I didn't give Will a chance to fix things, even after I had promised that I would, that I would just ignore whatever he tried to do to fix things between us, and I could see the hurt on his face, and to my shame, it felt good, I was happy that he was hurting as much as I was, god, I messed everything up so much.

How can I make Will believe that I truly loved him and still do? I got involved with him while I still hadn't dealt with my feelings for Paul, and that was so wrong, also, I didn't tell him about Paul being in town, I acted like I was doing nothing wrong.

The truth is though I could see that Paul wanted me back, and I really didn't discourage him, it felt good to be pursued again. The thing is that after we got married, everything settled down like it is supposed to, and I guess I missed that feeling of how it is when you first get with someone, that rush.

I can see that even if I didn't cheat, I wasn't true to our marriage vows, that I liked the attention that Paul was giving me, it was an ego boost. It felt good to be desired, that more than one person wanted me again.

It was like when Brian was after me, and I liked how Will worked harder to show me how much I meant to him all the time. My actions may have pushed Will to do what he did, and I have to deal with that. God knows that I did some stupid things, like taking all our savings and dumping it into the club.

I know that the only reason that Will agreed to do that article on Paul was for the fee, so that we would have some money in the bank, and he may have felt pressured to do whatever was necessary to make sure that he got the story, and if he had a chip in his head, what could it have commanded him to do?

The other issue is that almost everyone took my side with the situation, and Will had no support, and that was making the situation worse, and then it came out that Paul was his step-uncle, and he couldn't get away from the person that was part of the reason for his life crumbling.

He had to watch as Paul was welcomed to the family, and most of the people in Salem encouraging him to pursue me, because to them it was obvious that we belonged together. I can only imagine how much it hurt to see his friends and family turn their backs on him, and they can't deny that is what they did.

They can't rewrite history, no matter how much they might want to do, to make themselves feel less guilty. To have all of them pushing another man at his husband, and be so welcoming to Paul, it must have felt like a knife in his heart.

I don't know if I could have handled that, it would have broken my heart and spirit, and I am guessing that it did the same to him, and we all have to remember that his last memories of how he felt in Salem was that of him seeing how little his family and friends seemed to care about him.

If he ever remembers that last year in Salem, it will be him seeing that they were all quite happy to replace him with the new guy that they seemed to think fit in better in their family and in his life particularly, and that they believed that his husband should leave him for this person.

He will remember that everyone thought someone else was better than him, and that they didn't care how much it hurt him, even if they believed that they had a good reason for how they treated him, so why should he want to go back and see any of them.

If he doesn't, I couldn't blame him and would never try to talk him into doing that. It would probably be better if it is Will, if his memories never came back for those months, because he wouldn't have to live with the pain and anguish he must have felt when he was all alone, and with no one to support him and care for him.

To be honest, looking back, we are lucky that there wasn't another outcome from those last few months. Imagine if he had ever felt pushed far enough, and if he felt that he had nothing left to live for anymore.

I believe that the reason Will didn't up and leave or do something worse, was because of Ari, if he didn't have his daughter, there might actually have been a body in that grave for real, what if he had killed himself because of the pain?"

After Sonny is finished speaking, they all just sit back and think on how true what Sonny had just said was, and they wonder why would Will want to come back to them, to let them be part of his life again, because of their past behavior to him, the only ones who hadn't done that to him were his parents.

If he is Will, then imagine how their lives could change, if they can convince Detective Oxford to take a DNA test as they are hoping. If it turns out that the test proves what they are all starting to believe is correct, that he really is their Will, and they can have him back in their lives, it would be fantastic.

They know however that they will have a lot to make up to him, and that they will have to work hard to convince him to forgive them for their past behavior. They know that it may not happen right away, and that the others back in Salem will have to do the same if they want a relationship with Will again, and this Will is completely different from the old Will.

They are all lost in their thoughts of how their lives could change after their meeting that afternoon, and they are filled with anxiety and anticipation while they wait for the time to meet up with the man they hope is Will, at the station.

They stay at the hotel and have lunch together as a group before it is time to go the PD to meet with Detective Oxford, or Will as they hope. They are all nervous about the thought of talking to Will, because it was only Sami and Lucas last night at the club who spoke to him.

They don't know what to say to someone who may be their relative, someone that they had thought was dead, but now is alive again. God that sounds so weird, was he even ever dead, or did someone just make them think he was? Is it Will, and not just an amazing lookalike?

Can they convince him that they are not all crazy, that he might really be the person they think he is, explain the situation and get him to understand what happened two years ago? They need to know once and for all, for their sanity, is he Will?

Also, if he is, how did he get to Memphis when the last time they saw him was the day he was attacked by Ben, and believed to be dead? How did his unconscious body get from Salem to Memphis, was he taken there right away, and if not, where was he held, and why was he taken away from Salem.

Paul is happy for Sonny and Will, that they may get a second chance to get their relationship right, and he hopes that he will find someone for himself soon that will be the love of his life like Will is the love of Sonny's life.

Sami is almost vibrating in place, she is so excited that her seat is shaking, and Lucas clamps a hand on her leg to calm her down. Adrienne does not appreciate this action, but what can she say, she kissed Justin when he got her out of Statesville. God, who does she want to be with now? She has to decide sooner or later.

They finally leave for the station, and when they get there, they ask the officer at the front desk if Detective Oxford can be paged, but the officer tells them that they are expected, and someone will take them to where the detectives' squad rooms are located.

A young officer arrives and takes them up to the third floor where they find that all the different divisions' detectives located in the different areas of the floor in an open concept design, and the different divisions have been set up in separate areas with sliding walls that can be used when needed for meetings, but otherwise all sections are open to the other divisions.

The divisions have found that having this setup makes it easier to help each other in working together on cases when needed. There is much less tension between the divisions, and they have found that having other eyes on their cases have helped in many situations.

Interdivisional cooperation is great, and it has helped solved more cases when supposedly unrelated cases or issues pop up, and a connection can be made from the open communication setup. This is one of the new concepts that their youngest detective came up with for them.

Although at first, the others were sceptical, it has been proven to be an enormous success, just like all his other ideas. Their stats are proof of how well the idea is working out for them, and they intend to keep it like this.

They step off the elevator into the reception area of the floor, and the people from Salem just look around because the setup is nothing like they have seen before, and they are shocked at how modern everything is.

Especially with the rows of monitors on the walls all around the room, that are being used to display evidence, instead of the more usual whiteboards that are common in police stations. The room is bustling with activity, Will or Detective Oxford is seen working away on his computer.

He and his team finish up the last of the reports from their capture and arrest of the Death to Dancers killer, as they have been calling him in the squad room. As soon as the paperwork is officially finished, they can hand it over to the DA's office so that the prosecution team can schedule the trial, and get another killer off the streets of their fair city.

At first, none of the occupants seem to notice the visitors, and one of the other detectives jokingly calls out to their youngest member, "Hey, Fordie, what number is this latest serial killer that you caught since you became a detective, is it 4 or 5?"

Oxford/Will responds, "Number 4, not bad for a year's work. Give me some time, I am sure that more will come looking for me."

The first detective, Philson, who had asked the question says, "That's right, for sure, you seem to be a homing beacon for those guys, and they all seem to come here looking for you, it's like they are attracted to you or something. "

Oxford, "It must be my magnetic personality."

The whole squad room laughs at the two detectives' conversation, while Sami and everyone from Salem just look at them in shock. This young detective has captured 4 serial killers in a year, on top of god knows how many other violent criminals he has apprehended during that time as well.

They stare at him in shock, and Sami gasps at the thought of all those violent people being around the man who may be her son, and she shudders at the idea that he could have been injured so many times doing this job. Being an officer is dangerous, she has seen that with her family in Salem.

He looks so much like Will, but he is so much more confident and secure in himself than Will ever was. If it Will, it is a totally new Will, one that they will have to get to know all over again, and hope that he will love them as much as their old Will did, and will want to be part of their family again.

One of the oldest detectives calls out to Oxford, and says, "Hey kiddo, has the newest batch of cases been uploaded to our tablets yet?"

Oxford, "Yes, all your files are available now. Actually, the team and I have almost all the cold case files uploaded as well. I figure we can brainstorm over some of them in between our current cases. You know how much easier it is when we can all look at the evidence and paperwork at the same time.

If one of us miss something, then someone else will pick up on it, and we can hopefully find some additional information to close out these cases, and gives the victims and their families some closure, it would be great to be able to let them know that we have someone that can be held responsible for the pain they caused them, especially in the cases where they lost loved ones."

Philson, "Yes, the 3D views of the pieces of the existing evidence are great, you know that thanks to your very unusual mind, we have been able to see evidence in a whole new way, and find new evidence that we might have missed before.

The information search program that is running continuously on our cases, and the 3D mapping program that you have put in place for crime scenes, they are amazing. They have changed how we do our jobs for the better.

The biggest thing though is the fact that you taught all of us dinosaurs, me and the rest of the old timers how to negotiate our way through all the technology and software so that we are not left behind. You have proven to us that we can compete with the younger cops like you who grew up with all this stuff."

Oxford is almost blushing as the rest of the detectives are agreeing with Philson. Their captain finally draws their notice to the visitors who are standing at the end of the room listening to the detectives as they are talking just as Philson starts to talk about how Oxford's company is going to revolutionize prisoner security.

The captain says to the detectives, "People, we have visitors here at the moment. Let's keep it down for now. He says to them jokingly, "We can go back to praising Fordie later, once our visitors are gone."

Captain Binington comes forward and introduces himself to the group, and he asks them how the Memphis PD can help them this fine day. The female detective from the undercover assignment the night before comes forward. She introduces herself to the group as Detective Katling.

Katling, "Cap, these are the people from the club last night. They were there for Fordie's awesome takedown of the Death to Dancer suspect. They are also the people that the Salem PD contacted us about yesterday.

They are looking for a missing person, a young man named Will Horton, aged almost 25, he was presumed to have been murdered two years ago in Salem, they had a funeral for him and he was even buried.

However, it was discovered a few days ago that he may not be dead, when his alleged killer broke out of the psychiatric facility where he was being held, and interrupted the wedding of Will's widower and informed them that Will wasn't dead.

He said that he saw a picture of Will in a Memphis newspaper, and that's how he knows that Will isn't dead after all, and he was glad because he was upset when he thought that he had killed Will, because they were friends.

Obviously, the family needed to know for sure, so they decided that they would have to exhume the body and test the DNA to prove that their loved one was dead, and that the killer was just playing a very cruel joke on them.

There is a catch though, there was no body in his casket when it was exhumed. Weights had been found in the casket, and there was never any sign that a body had ever been in the casket, no forensic evidence could be found that Will's body was ever placed in the casket, no hair or any form of DNA was present.

Also, apparently there is no corresponding paperwork that can verify that Will Horton is either dead or alive. The ME didn't complete the paperwork properly before he retired, and then he died just after that, and his office staff left at the same time, have not been found, there is no sign of them since shortly after they left Salem.

The funeral home is a bust as well, all their computer backups and their old paper files were destroyed in a fire, and their computer system from the office was stolen a few months after Mr. Horton died, and the officer manager who took care of all the paperwork for the funeral home had left that job, and was killed in a home invasion just last year with his family.

Captain Binington, "Okay, can you give us a description of what this young man looks like, if you have any pictures that we can access, it would be even better, and my detectives can get started looking around Memphis for your relative or the person who looks like him. With my detectives on the case, they should have some answers for you within a few hours.

Our department is glad to help you try and locate this man, and we will try and convince him to agree to a DNA test so that you will know once and for all if this person is really your relative or just an incredible lookalike. I do feel for your pain, and my youngest detective has an amazing program for tracking information and people down.

I am sure that he and our computer team can use the facial recognition program to see if they can match the picture to anyone currently in Memphis, he is fantastic at this type of thing, and I know that he would be glad to help you in your search.

Katling interrupts her captain for a minute. She says, "Cap, the kicker to this story is shocking though the picture that the alleged killer saw of Will Horton was the one of Fordie that was used to advertise his stint at Black Velvet, apparently, our Fordie looks so much like Will Horton that they could be identical twins from what the officers in Salem told me."

Binington says to his detective, "Are they sure, did they know the young man who was murdered, or are they just seeing a resemblance because of the circumstances, and for the family's sake, they are hoping that a stranger in Memphis could be this young man that they are searching for now? Surely his immediate family knew the difference once they met up with Fordie last night, and could see him in person."

John puts his arm around Marlena's waist and speaks up and says to the captain, "One of the detectives is his aunt who had known him since he was a baby, and the other one is his former stepfather who has known him since he was about twelve years old.

So yes, they are quite familiar with what he looks like, and your detective is a dead-ringer for our grandson. We had gone to the club last night in the hope that we could see him then, explain the situation and ask him if he would agree to let us take a DNA sample.

We never expected that the young performer we were looking to meet would end up being a detective from the Memphis PD, who was undercover trying to catch a serial killer from what we heard when we came to the squad room to meet up with the detectives from last night as they had suggested we do before they left the club."

Sami looks at Captain Binington and says, "Your detective Oxford is a dead-ringer for my late son, as my stepfather just mentioned. It was the picture of your detective that my son's killer said was Will. We came to Memphis to find the man who was in the picture.

We had to when we discovered that his coffin was empty. We know that Will is dead, his father and I saw him in the morgue, and we held his hand and I kissed his forehead, he was cold to the touch, but we need to know for sure that Will is truly gone.

That even if we don't have his body, that we will know that he is resting in peace, we need that closure so that we can finally move on with our lives. Having that monster come back, and tell us that my baby boy is still alive was so cruel, because he knew that we would have to investigate it, and I think he is getting a thrill out of hurting even more the second time, by giving us hope that Will might be alive.

All we want is a DNA sample from your detective so that we can prove to ourselves and everyone else including his younger brother and sisters that Will is gone, and we need to be able to look at his daughter and tell her when she is older that we know for certain that her daddy is gone, and not out somewhere by himself, and not able to get back to her.

All the detectives from Memphis look at Sami, Lucas and the rest of the people from Salem in sympathy. They feel for the family, and they know something that the people from Salem don't. They look at Fordie to see what he wants them to do about this situation.

He looks hesitant but nods at his captain to continue with the conversation with the visitors, he is thrown after hearing that Will Horton has a daughter. Captain Binington looked at Sami and Lucas, and says to them, "Tell me about your son, how old did you say he was when he was supposed to have passed away, can you tell us what he was like, what did he do for a living?"

Sami looks at Lucas and her family as well as Sonny and his parents. She turns to Captain Binington, and says, "He was great, he had issues like everyone, but he was working on fixing them. He was not quite 23 when he was murdered.

He was a writer, just staring out in his career, but he had a few articles published before he died. He was a fantastic big brother, and his brother and sisters adored him. He always made time for them even though he was almost a teenager when the twins were born.

He had a beautiful little girl with his high school girlfriend, she had gotten pregnant right before he came out, but they were parenting Ari together. He had been married, but right before he passed he and his husband had been having some trouble and had separated temporarily.

They still loved each other but there were some issues that needed to be fixed, which unfortunately didn't happen before that monster killed him. He thought that his husband didn't love him anymore because one of his husband's exes had shown up in town.

This had caused some issues between them, Will was convinced that his husband was still in love with his ex, but that's not true, his husband had been out of town when Will was attacked, he had actually been packing to go back to Salem when he received the news that Will had been killed.

His husband was devastated that they never had the chance to fix their marriage, and that he didn't have the chance to let Will know how much he loved him. He never saw Will alive again, and because of Will being strangled to death, and the marks that were left on his neck, we couldn't handle seeing him like that again.

We decided to have a closed casket so after Will's body was discovered in their apartment where his killer left him, after he went to the ME's office and we identified him, so we never saw him again after that time in the morgue. We had no idea that his body wasn't in the casket when it was buried.

We are devastated, and we wish that we could find his body but there is no way to track it down, we don't know if he was buried or cremated, where his remains or ashes are, and we can't locate them. Once we have the proof that your detective isn't Will, at least that will be one bit of closure.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for the test to show that he is Will, and we would have our son back, and his little girl would have her daddy back again, she was just two when Will was killed. We must be realistic though, what are the chances that your detective and our son are the same person, but it's just too much to wish for it to be real.

We know that it is an imposition, but hopefully he and all of you can see where we are coming from, and the reason for us needing to do this. It might sound crazy to you, but we need to prove to ourselves that Will is gone, we can't live in the hope that he may show up alive some day, that's not going to happen, is it?

Ironically the guy who killed Will was a very close friend of his, and Will was going to the best man in this guy's wedding to Will's cousin. Will had been at their apartment the day he was killed, he was doing them a favor waiting for the cable company to send someone to fix the problem they were having.

Will was bored, so he started shooting baskets with paper balls, and he wasn't a good shot that day so there were a lot of scrunched up paper on the floor, and when Will picked them up to throw them away, he went over to put them in the waste paper basket.

Just as he was about to put them in the basket, he noticed a sheet of paper with an address on it and a red tie next to it. See, the thing that caught his attention was that the address on the piece of paper was the address of the second victim of a serial killer that we had in Salem at the time, and she and the first victim had been strangled with a red tie.

He had also attacked my mother, but she escaped from him. Will saw those two things, and right away he flashed to Serena and Paige's murders, and at first, he thought it had to be a coincidence. He didn't want to believe that his friend could be a killer, and that it must be him just jumping to conclusions.

However, the more he thought about it, he realized that it made more sense to him than the suspect that the police were looking at during that time, his cousin's ex-boyfriend, Chad. He and Chad were also friends since they were in school, and he knew that Chad couldn't kill anyone, especially not like that.

While Will was still holding on to the address slip and the tie, the guy Ben had returned to the apartment and found Will with the evidence. Will tried to leave then, but Ben stopped him, he attacked him.

From what we know he threw Will at the fridge, and Will hit head hard, and was semi-conscious, and when he landed on the floor, Ben jumped on him and strangled him to death. He took Will's body from his place, and brought Will back to his apartment.

He left his body for Gabi, Ari's mother to find. Ben admitted that he had killed Will because Will had figured out that he was the killer, and that he had been killing the women, trying to frame Chad so that Abby wouldn't love or want him anymore.

He was doing all this because he knew that his fiancé was still in love with Chad, even though she was pregnant with Ben's baby, or at least he thought it was his baby. That wasn't true though, Chad was the father, but they only found after the baby was born.

He killed my son so that Will couldn't let the police know who the real killer was, and that Chad was innocent. My son died because he was a good friend and cousin, and he ended up finding out the truth about the killer, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time cost him his life.

Will was such a good kid, probably better than I ever deserved, and a part of me died with him that day. Having to bury my son at his age. It broke my heart into jagged little pieces, and it has never been the same since we lost him. And god, how I wish we could have him back, but that's not going to happen, he's gone.

Binington speaks up, "Not to be rude, but you don't look old enough to have a son that would be 25 years old now."

Sami, "I was only 15 when Will was born but I never regretted having him! He was the best thing I ever did, him and my other kids."

Binington, "You sound like you truly believe that your son is gone. Are you hoping that it could be true that he is alive or are you just wanting to rule out any chances of him surviving?"

The others look at Binington when he asks Sami this, they can't believe that he would ask a grieving mother a question like that, but they don't know that he has a reason for asking that particular question and he needs to know her answer, before he can say anything.

Sami says to him, "I would give anything to have him back, it ripped my heart out of my chest when he died. I can't let myself believe that he could really be alive until we have some proof that it could be true.

To have him back with us and his little girl, it would be the most amazing thing that could ever happen. I have felt a hole in my heart since all of that happened. It wasn't natural for me to be burying my son, it should have been him burying me in the future; parents aren't meant to bury their children, it's not the natural order of things.

Binington says to Sami, "So, you're his mother, who else is here with you? Are you all his family, you must all have loved him very much, and I guess that you wish that you could get him back?"

Sami starts introducing the people with her to Binington since he is so curious. She knows that they need to stay on his good side if they want his help to get Detective Oxford to give them a DNA sample so that they can know if he is Will or not.

Sami starts pointing to people, "Lucas here is his dad, the blond-haired lady behind me is my mom, Will's grandmother, Marlena Evans. The gentleman with her is my stepfather, John Black. We also have Justin Kiriakis and Adrienne Johnson, along with their son Sonny Kiriakis, and the muscled young man is Paul Narita, who is John's son."

Binington asks her how the last four people are related to Will, and she says that Paul is technically Will's step uncle because John was just like a grandfather to Will. The last three people are Will's widower, Sonny and his parents.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own any part of Days of our Lives, but all Memphis characters are mine.

Please read and review. Reviews are like good chocolate, always savored.

Slow Southern Style – Chapter 5

Binington then tells them something. He says, "Before you get to see Detective Oxford again, he has asked me to fill you in on some things. I need to give you some background on him, and I am sure that you have asked the detectives in Salem to find out what they could about him after last night.

We expected that, and our tracking program let us know that they were looking for information on him, but there is more than what they were able to tell you about him. As you know, Adam is one of our newest detectives.

He only graduated from the academy about a year ago. He is a great cop, and we are proud to have here him with us. We met him when he applied to the academy after he was released from the rehabilitation center at the hospital.

He was there in a coma for several months before he woke up, and spent the next four months learning to walk and talk again. When he was first admitted to the hospital, they figured from his condition that he would remain in a vegetative state until his body gave out.

They never thought that he would recover, let alone have any quality of life because they were sure that he would have significant brain damage because of how he was found. They were able to determine that he was deprived of oxygen for an extreme amount of time.

Based on what they knew, and previous cases such as his, they believed that his brain would never regain its' proper functions again and let him live any kind of life that would have any sort of quality, that he would never be able to feel anything like pleasure or the like, that he would just wither away and die as his body gave up the fight.

Everyone from Salem looks at each other in disbelief. They are thinking how could both Will and his lookalike both have been through something that could have deprived them of oxygen for an extended length of time, they are more convinced than ever that Adam Oxford has to be Will.

Sami is ready to flip out, so Lucas and Marlena both wrap their arms around her, to hold her in place. John seeing what they have done, decides to speak up and to try and find out what exactly had happened to the detective, to see if the information would add up, making it likely that he was Will.

John, "What happened to him, was he in an accident, and he wasn't found by anyone for an extended period? Did he crash somewhere remote, and how was he deprived of oxygen for such a long time?"

Binington, "That's the problem. Adam has no memory of anything from before he woke up at the hospital's physical rehabilitation center. He has retrograde amnesia. The doctors have speculated that it may be permanent, but since he proved them wrong once before, they aren't willing to swear to that.

They can't or won't say that he will never remember but they are not optimistic or even slightly hopeful that his memories will ever return. You see, Adam's body was discovered in the woods in the suburbs just outside Memphis. We have never found out how his body got there, and more importantly, who put it there, and what happened before he ended up there.

He was found in Oxford, which is where he took his last name from, and he chose Adam because it is the name of the first man. Up until he chose that name, he was a John Doe. He has come really far in the past eighteen months, he has surpassed what anyone thought was possible considering the condition he was found in.

He decided that even though we couldn't find out who he was, that he wanted to become a police officer himself, he said that he wanted to help people like we had tried to do for him and that he wanted to help protect the public.

He said that he felt drawn to the police force, almost it was like a calling that he couldn't ignore, he had to follow what his heart felt was right for him to do with his life, now that he had woken up and recovered from whatever had happened to him.

Adam is around 25 or so, but obviously we can't confirm that. We sent faxes to every police force in the country asking if they could identify the young man in the picture, he was a John Doe at that point, actually John Doe 157, I believe, but that's just off the top of my head.

However, we never received any response back from any of the police forces, not one police force could identify him from the photo that we used. I guess that they figured if they couldn't identify him, they didn't need to respond, and they didn't. We started with the all police forces in Tennessee, then we went to the surrounding states, and finally nationwide.

Before you came here today, I decided to review the lists of all the outgoing faxes that were sent, and we did send one to Salem PD, but never got any response one way or the other back from them. It was like it was not seen, or that no one could identify our John Doe, or the worst possibility, that it was ignored.

Which we believe probably happened at more than a few forces, unfortunately, John and Jane Doe requests don't always get the proper attention they should when they are received, because they are not considered important enough to take time away from an active case."

When John hears this, about the fax never being sent to Salem but that it was never responded to, he pulls out his phone and calls Rafe right away. He explains what the Memphis PD Captain of Detectives had just told them about a fax requesting information on a John Doe had been sent to Salem.

He then tells Rafe that they had never received an answer in response to the fax. Rafe is confused but asks him why they want to know about a fax for a John Doe, and John tells him that the John Doe is now known as Detective Adam Oxford, and that the fax had been sent about six weeks after Will had died or they thought he had.

Rafe is in shock, and he calls Hope, JJ and Lani over, and he tells them what John had just told him. They are determined to find out what happened, and where that fax is, there's no way that it could have been seen, because almost everyone at the station knew Will from the time he was a child.

They decide to go through all the paper files from that time frame. At first, the files look normal, but when JJ goes to close the drawer he is looking in, it sticks from a file stuffed right in the back, the way the file is shredded, they wonder if it had gotten stuck by accident.

They glove up, because they don't want to disturb any fingerprints when they remove the file from the cabinet, they will be checking the prints against anyone who could have been responsible for the file being misplaced hopefully, and not hidden on purpose.

It has a massive number of documents in it, and they notice that the folder is unlabelled, so now they are believing that it was not accidental that the file was hidden. They call John back and he asks the captain for the date the fax was sent, and he looks it up for them.

He not only gives them the date but the time it was transmitted as well; when they have the exact date, they start going through the papers, and this pile of documents match the time frame for the fax, but are not finding any faxes from the Memphis PD, and they are feeling very frustrated.

They decide to doublecheck everything and switch piles for fresh eyes in case they missed anything, and when Rafe goes to hand his pile to JJ, they slip out of his hand, and they all hit the floor. Rafe is ready to start swearing at this point, but they all bend down to pick up the papers.

As they are lifting a multipage document, a separate sheet falls out and hits the floor. JJ picks it up, and looks at the page, it is a fax from Memphis PD asking if anyone can identify the young man shown on the page.

It is a photo of the young man known at that time as John Doe 157, and the guy in the photo looks just like Will Horton; if it's not Will, it could be his identical twin. Rafe calls John back right away, and he tells John that they found the fax, and exactly where it was found.

He tells him that it had been shoved between the pages of another document that had been shoved into an unlabelled file folder with a substantial number of other documents, and that the file folder had been shoved into the back of an unused file cabinet in the back of the file room, and that unfortunately, it looks like it may have been done on purpose.

They can't be sure that it was done deliberately or not, but dear God, could this John Doe 157/Adam Oxford be Will, and could they have found out almost two years ago that Will could be alive. Who was responsible for them not getting or more accurately not seeing the fax from Memphis PD?

Who could it have been, because almost every person working at Salem PD knew Will because of all his family members working there, and if they had seen this fax, how could they not let Rafe or Hope know that there was someone who looked just like Will Horton, that the Memphis PD were trying to find identification for, and that even if it was a coincidence, that it should have been shown to the detectives.

If they had seen the fax, they could have responded to it and have acted on it. They could have had Will back almost right away. The fax was dated less than two months after Will was supposed to have been killed.

Hope is so mad not only because of the fax being misfiled either by accident or as it is looking deliberately, and Will not being identified at that time; but also, because there are other documents that had been needed for prosecutions taking place during that time.

Those prosecutions either had to be postponed or the charges dropped due to the lack of corroborating evidence; she must call the DA and Abe with this information right away. She heads off to make the calls, she can only imagine the explosions that are going to happen in the DA's office and the mayor's office.

John tells the others and the captain in Memphis what had just been found in the file room at the Salem PD, that the fax had been found, but that it and a lot of other documents from that week had been shoved into an unused file cabinet.

They are wondering was it taken along with evidence from a specific case on purpose, or was it because for some reason during that week that an employee there had bundled all the documents together to work on later that week.

They wonder if they just never did anything with them, that either they forgot about them, that they had left them aside for too long and were afraid to then process them, so they hid them away, or they had been paid to get rid of the papers.

They wonder that if it was the last option, was the fax the main thing or had it just gotten swept up with the other papers that were hidden away. John tells them that Hope has gone to call Abe and fill him in, and to get him to find out who had been on duty during that week, so that they can try and find out what had happened. They need to speak to whoever was working when the papers disappeared, if it was done deliberately, and if so, who was behind it and why?

Sami looks at Binington and says, "It's possible then that Adam is Will, isn't it?"

Binington, "Having heard what you said about how Will died, and now hearing about how the fax went missing in Salem, yes, I believe that it is possible. A huge question remains though, if Adam is Will, how did his body get from the morgue in Salem to the woods on the outskirts of Memphis?

When he was found in those wood, it was almost two months after Will was supposedly murdered, he was unconscious and in almost in a vegetative state? He was unconscious when he was dumped in those woods, he did not wander there himself.

So, who had him, why did they have him, and where was he for those two months, and what was that thing in him when he was found?"

Marlena asks Binington, "What thing are you talking about? What did they find in him?"

Binington says, "When he was admitted to the hospital after he was found, they were trying to give him an MRI, they tried multiple times, and the machine went crazy every time when they tried to run any tests on him, it kept shutting down, so they had to give up trying to examine him that way.

They ended up having to do exploratory surgery on his brain just to see what kind of damage had been done to him, and what was wrong with him, they could see severe head and neck trauma, it looked like blunt force trauma on the back of his head.

Also, most of the cartilage in his neck had been badly damaged, and they were wondering if he had been strangled, or if it wasn't that, what had caused the compression in that area. They had to find out if there was any brain function left, because if there had been any damage to the brain stem, then that would most likely have been it for him.

It was at this point that they thought that he was going to be in a vegetative state. They found some sort of thing in his brain when they operated and at first when they tried to remove it, he started seizing badly, and seizures during brain surgery are not a good sign, they tell us.

It looked like some type of weird computer chip, but not like anything we had ever seen before, it was attached to his memory and logic centers. When they got it out of his head, our computer techs took it to examine, and to try to figure its' purpose.

It looked like from the little data that we were able to retrieve from the chip, that it had been told to wipe his mind, but it only seemed to have affected his memory, it apparently malfunctioned before it could do the whole job it was so supposed to complete.

We were able to get some of the commands off the chip, we still have it in evidence, we just don't have anyone who knows how to access all the information on it. Fordie could probably do it, but he has said that he can't stand even looking at it, knowing that it was in his brain, making him do whatever he was told to do because of that thing.

After the surgery was finished, they told us that they didn't hold out much hope for him, he wasn't brain dead, but as far as they could tell, he was in an irreversible coma. One doctor however refused to give up on him, he was optimistic that the young John Doe patient could recover.

He got the physical therapists to come into his room every day and exercise him so that his muscles wouldn't atrophy from all the time just laying in the hospital bed, and after a few weeks, he and the physical therapists were reprimanded for wasting hospital resources.

So, after this happened, he and the PTs started to do this on their breaks, and after their regular working hours. They still felt that he could recover, and they wanted to give him the best chance he would have of getting better, so they kept this up the whole time he was in the coma.

The doctor kept working with Adam, and he was constantly having everyone tell him that his efforts were being wasted, however, he and the PTs working with Adam were elated when months later, Adam came out of the coma with everything except his memory intact.

The faces on the doctors that had told him and the PTs to give up, were showing total shock and disbelief, as well as a good bit of embarrassment also, especially from being showed up by a younger and less experienced doctor."

Marlena, "It seems like you know a lot about this young doctor, and the work he was doing with Adam? You must know him very well, to be so filled in on one of his patients."

Binington, "I do, he is my favorite nephew, he is the one that told us about the John Doe, and the strange chip that was found in his brain. We didn't know that at the time though, it was only when he came out of the coma, that we realized that he had no memory of anything that had happened to him before he woke up.

His life basically started over the day he woke up, and he slowly became Adam Oxford. He blew through his physical therapy in two months, but the vocal therapy took longer, because of the damage to his neck but as you heard for yourself last night, he got his voice back.

While he was doing the speech therapy, he did extra physical exercises every day, and he was in great shape by the time he was discharged from the hospital, and as soon as he had gotten settled in an apartment, he then applied to the police academy.

To be honest, at first the police academy didn't want to take him in case he relapsed. Adam agreed to be tested several times to show that he was more than fit to join the academy, and they admired his perseverance.

He got into the next class of cadets because there was no medical or legal reason to keep him out. He ran circles around the other cadets, and it was like he already knew so much about police procedures, that it wasn't even funny. He aced all the courses, and became a sniper level marksman.

His scores were so high that our SWAT team tried to recruit him, but he wanted to be on the streets, but he did agree to be a reserve sniper if he was ever needed, and he was the best rookie we had ever seen or ever had on the force.

He broke every record that the academy had, and he was so likeable that none of the other cadets had any problems, he even tutored his classmates if they were having any problems. They are all still as close as they were in the academy, they all get together once a month, and they threw a massive party for him when he became a detective, they were so proud of him and that he made it so quickly.

His deductive capabilities are amazing, and he sees clues and can put pieces together like no one else, and he could see connections between supposedly unrelated facts or cases unlike anyone else we have ever worked with. He was promoted to detective six months after he graduated the academy, and he has only gotten better since then. I can't wait to see him in five years, he will be unstoppable.

We have been fighting off all the other departments and federal agencies in the country who have been trying to lure him away from us, everyone wants him. To be honest, our stats have never been so good. You would think that the other guys, the older detectives, would have a problem with him and mind the attention he is getting, but they all love him and see him as their kid brother.

He showed all of us older cops how to use the newest software and understand what we are doing with it, so that we don't get left behind with the latest policing technology advances. He got us funding for top of the line equipment as you can just from looking around the squad room.

He looked into all the grants that were available from the federal government for that purpose, he went to the brass and asked if he could apply on our behalf, filled out all the applications, and he went through the selection process and got them all for us, for the whole department not just the detectives.

All our officers and detectives have all their case information on their tablets which can go everywhere with them, and the way he structured the information search program that he designed for us to work is remarkable.

Any additional information on any our cases that comes in goes directly to us as soon as the program identifies the information and the case that it refers to. We have never been so efficient and focused, and all the defence lawyers in town hate us.

He has the department so well organized that not one case has been thrown out of court on a technicality because of paperwork issues on the police side since he started with us. The few that we have had tossed had come from improper evidence handling and a couple of poorly written warrants.

Since that happened, all our divisions including our evidence division and the DA's office, have undergone training in the latest techniques and regulations for paperwork, evidence handling, and all legal documents to counteract the problems that caused the few cases to be tossed out for those issues in the past.

Memphis currently has the highest closure and conviction rates in the country thanks to him, even though he will disagree, and say that it's a group effort which is just one of the reasons that we all love the kid. He never takes credit for anything, he always spreads it around the whole division.

He has also become our departmental liaison for dealing with other forces across the country and for dealing with the federal agencies; and he charms them all so much that they all love dealing with him. He doesn't suck up to them at all, he just treats them all with respect, and they appreciate that so much.

Our working relationships with the federal agencies have never been so good before as they are now. He is the best thing to ever happen to our department, and we are not letting him go without a fight. That response comes from our mayor on down, from the police commissioner, and the DA's office as well.

Everyone wants Fordie to stay here with us. The offers come flooding in every day, there is actually a bin here full of the formal written copies of all the offers that he has received just in the last couple of months.

The only one we are worried that he might be tempted by is one from the FBI's BAU, that is the one that could get him to consider leaving us, but so far, they haven't sent an offer, and we have been checking the mail every day."

Binington goes over to the side of the room, picks up a huge mail bin that is overflowing with envelopes and brings it back with him. He lays it down on the side table behind the group, and shows it to everyone from Salem.

They are shocked, there must be at least a hundred envelopes there, and the captain has said that this is only the unopened offers. They wonder if the offer from Salem is in the bin or the folder waiting to be checked out.

Binington, "This is just the offers from the past six weeks, the others have been opened, and are waiting for Fordie to have a chance to go through them, he has been working on and solving cases non-stop since he started with us, he has a fantastic closure and conviction rate.

He has been so busy with work that he hasn't even had a chance to look at the opened ones let alone the ones coming in every day. He has said that he can't take the time away from getting closure for the victims' families to read through the offers from the other departments, that the cases must come first.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own any part of Days of our Lives, but all Memphis characters are mine.

Please read and review. Reviews are like good chocolate, always savored.

Slow Southern Style - Chapter 6

He has also helped most of us who had become detached and hardened from what we have been exposed to over the years, to become more compassionate and open towards the people and what they have been through just by trying to copy his attitude with them, and we are better cops because of that.

He was also worried about the stress that we were under, so he has gotten us all exercising together, and doing team trust exercises, it might sound funny, but it really has helped us work together better as a team, and it has lowered our stress rates significantly, he even has us all practicing tai chi, for god's sake.

At first, a lot of us were sceptical, but it has really worked, and when we had our yearly physicals a couple of months ago, everyone was in better shape, most of our have lost weight, and the doctor couldn't believe how good our blood pressure has become, and he has us eating healthier as well.

We even do potlucks once a month, and he has been getting us to try some various kinds of stuff, healthier stuff, he was sneaky about it, he did it up like what we thought was regular food, and it was fantastic, we loved it, and then he told us it was all healthy versions of our favorite meals.

He has us socializing together outside of work, along with our spouses or significant others, and that has helped our relationships, and if you think we love the kid, you should see him with our wives, girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends.

We have joked thank God, he is gay, or we would all be after losing our lovers to him. They all adore him, he even has kept a log of when everyone's anniversary is, and he gives us a heads up about a week ahead of time, so that we don't forget, and he helps us make plans or pick out a gift if we don't know what to do."

John, "So, the department doesn't have a problem with one of their detectives being openly gay, that's an unusual attitude for a police department, isn't it, if you are being honest?"

Binington says to John, "Absolutely not, he has actually helped us make inroads into the LGBTQ community, and they are more willing nowadays to talk to us, and they know that we take what they have to say very seriously.

Once the community could see that one of our best officers and detectives was openly and proudly gay, and that we had no problem with him, and that we supported him, it showed to them that we would be willing to listen to them, and not dismiss any concerns they had.

We have had a few officers and detectives come out after Adam joined us, and they saw how he was treated, and they said that they felt that they could finally do that, and not experience any issues, because like you said, it is not the normal attitude in most forces.

We don't care about race, nationality, creed, religion, gender or sexual orientation, we just want the best officers and detectives we can have on our force, and we are proving that we mean what we said by putting into practice that idea.

We have been proving to our members and the public that we truly believe it, and that it is not just political correctness speaking, and that we just want to sound good to the public. As Fordie put it, to just walk the walk and talk the talk, do it the right way.

So now, I have told you everything about Fordie, and you have told us about your Will, and obviously with the resemblance, the similar ages, and the fact that there are no remains in the casket, and Fordie was found abandoned here in Memphis, we realize that there is a good chance that Fordie is Will.

He has agreed to the DNA request, because just as much as you need to know if he is Will, he needs to know for himself, he needs to find if he has family and friends out there who have missed him, because when we couldn't find out who he was, he had wondered about all of that.

Why if he was missing, wasn't there be someone out there searching to find him, didn't they want him back in their lives, or had they been glad to see him gone, and if they had just forgotten about him, and just gone on with their lives.

That concept was hard for him to deal with, it is the only thing we have ever seen get him down, he has coped amazingly well with not knowing who he really was, and if he had left any family and loved ones behind.

It is the main reason that he is single, because he told us that he couldn't get involved with someone without knowing if he had left a partner or husband behind, he couldn't betray them by being with someone else."

Everyone in Salem look at each other when they hear this, and are shocked, saddened and mad when they hear his next comments, because they explain so much of what happened Will's last year in Salem, and now Sonny doesn't know how he can ever make it up to Will.

Binington continues, "Also, he was dealing with the idea that there had been a chip that was used to control his behavior in his brain, and that it had been there for at least a year or more before he was found. He felt like he must have been acting crazy and out of control, because of the information we were able to gather from the chip.

It had a list of commands on it, and they all seemed to be telling him to act out, and to cause trouble, each act worse than the one before it, there was even one specific one that said that he had to seduce his partner's ex, and Fordie said that the idea that he had betrayed his partner made him feel so dirty and guilty.

He told us that because if he was with someone, he would never want to betray them, he is a firm believer in fidelity, and when a couple of our officers and detectives discovered that they were being cheated on, he was the first one there to support them, and try to make them feel better.

This was one of the stresses that he was worried about, and why he set up the social programs for the department. Those members of our force are now happy with the people that Fordie introduced them to, he went out of his way to find people that would be great with the officers and detectives that had been hurt by their partner's infidelity.

The new people they are with now are so much better than the ones they had been dating before, and Fordie just stood up in two weddings for some of the people he introduced. They are so happy and thankful to him because he helped them so much.

They said that he had to be there with them because he helped them find their soulmates. They want to find someone for him so much, but he has decided until he knows if he does have someone waiting for him, that he can't date anyone.

God knows that he has been asked so many times, but he feels until he knows if he left a partner or husband behind, that it would be a betrayal to be with anyone else. Especially, after what that chip made him do before, he said that he had betrayed someone already even if he wasn't willing, so he won't do it willingly, he can't date anyone until he finds out the truth.

He gets embarrassed when we say it, but he is the best thing to ever happen to this department, before we all worked together and were friendly, but now we are truly friends, and would do anything for each other, thanks to our baby brother Fordie.

He has turned us into a huge family, and he is the baby of the family, and god help anyone who tries to hurt him, they will have every member of our family to deal with. I can only imagine when he does start to date, the interrogation that any guy who is brave enough will have to face with all of us, we won't take it easy on them, they will have to be pretty special for us to let them near Fordie."

Binington looks at Sonny and Paul when he says this, because they have checked out the people from Salem after last night, and they know the whole story of the Will/Sonny/Paul mess, and they don't believe that it was all Will's fault.

With or without the effects from the chip, and they don't like how Sonny got a free pass for how he acted with Paul at the time, they know that Fordie deserves someone who knows exactly who and what he wants, and they are not sure that Sonny Kiriakis deserves another chance to hurt Fordie or as they call him, Will.

Even if Will had cheated, and from the looks of that chip now, it had not been what Will wanted to do, because he was forced to do it, so he should never have been treated the way he was, while the other two were free to flirt constantly, and no one ever defended Will, or told them off for their behavior, not one person, not even anyone in his family; they even heard how the families had pushed for Sonny to leave his husband for the other guy there.

Binington continues, "It seems like someone wanted his life ruined, but for what reason, what had he done to anyone that would cause them to want to do that to him. How much could he have hurt someone, that they would want to do that to him in revenge? Was it even for something he had done?

They caused him to do the one thing he knows that he would never do willingly, they took his right to choose who he slept with, to the rest of us here, he was sexually assaulted thanks to the chip and whoever was controlling it. Whenever that chip caused something to happen, it was not his choice, and he should not be blamed for it having happened.

To be honest, who would even have access to that kind of technology, and why in God's name, would they want to do that to someone, all we could think of was some crackpot scientist, who wanted to see what they could do to people, and one of our techs said it sounded like a behavior modification chip.

She told us that there had been rumors for years in the scientific community that there was a scientist, name unknown, that was working on just this premise, but the legitimate scientists had dismissed it as just talk and speculation.

She said no one really believed it, because it couldn't be true, who could be sick enough to do that, to put something like that in someone's brain, and where would they get the money to even attempt to even create this level of technology?

They would have to have someone paying for it, because once they started hearing the rumors, they checked it out, and there were no government programs doing this type of research, not even the more secretive agencies that were known to be involved in the shadier side of things were involved in this kind of research."

John says to Binington, "We know exactly who did this to Adam or Will, at this point I don't think we even need the DNA test but we will still have it performed just for legalities so that we can have proof that Will is indeed alive, and not just wishful thinking by us, and so that the courts can reinstate his parental rights for his daughter, Ari.

However, it was a madman by the name of Dr. Wilhelm Rolf who created the chip and most likely implanted it in Will, and he worked for Stefano DiMera, and it is not the first time that one of these behavior modifications chips were used, and they have used them to control people from Salem for more than twenty years.

Stefano and Rolf have created havoc in Salem for the longest time, and I believe that it was done as revenge against myself and my wife, Marlena. Stefano knew how much it would have hurt Marlena to see Will acting out like that, and he loved causing Doc pain.

He has been obsessed with Doc ever since he met her, and he has tried to ruin her life ever since then, he even kidnapped her, her ex-husband, their kids, and other people. He kept Doc prisoner for years before he finally released her, and that was just another plan to hurt her, to let her see that life had continued on without her for her family."

Just as John finishes saying this to the captain, they all look at each other and they realize that Will had been subjected to the same actions as Marlena had all those years ago, they believe that he was supposed to see how they lived their lives and didn't even think about him after he was gone.

However, because of his memory loss, he would never realize what had happened, how his family just went on without him, that they just seemed to forget about him once they had Paul to take his place, in their family and with Sonny.

How are they going to make this up to him, it's not like they can keep the information from him, not with his search program, he can find out how they just carried on with their lives after he was supposedly murdered, and how it seems like they didn't even miss him, or care that he was dead.

It's obvious to them that it had to be Stefano who was responsible for what had been done to Will, by trying to hurt Marlena through her grandson, and in the end, Will paid the price. Stefano didn't care what it did to Will's life.

He caused Will to behave the way he did, controlled all his actions during that time, and was responsible for Will sleeping with Pau and causing him to cheat on Sonny, to be unfaithful against his will, and hurt them both. He set out to cause Will's life to fall apart, to get back at both Marlena at first, and then Sami when she took the kids to LA after EJ's death.

Thanks to Stefano's actions, Will's last months in Salem before he was attacked were miserable, and he was treated horribly by everyone for hurting Sonny for what he had done, even though Sonny and Paul were both causing Will an immense amount of pain at the same time.

Sonny left him to face everyone in Salem, went to Paris to figure out who he loved more and wanted to be with, and then after the attack, he was taken, not killed like they thought, and his family believed him to be dead, and so they carried on with their lives, with no thoughts for Will and his memory.

Now it seems like Will never died, that Stefano and Rolf had made it look like he did though, and they wonder what happened after Sami and Lucas saw him in the morgue that night. He looked dead, he was cold to the touch, and he wasn't breathing that they could see. He must have been given something to make him seem like he was deceased, and it must have been done by Rolf.

Rafe and Gabi had both tried to revive him, and could not get him breathing, and there were strangulation marks on his neck, along with the tie that was used on him. So how did he go from being a corpse to being found in a near vegetative state almost two months later in the woods outside Memphis?

Where was he for all that time, and what had been done to him during those months? Why had they gone to all the trouble of making everyone think he was dead, only to abandon him so quickly after that?

What plans did they want him for, what did they plan to do to him, or to use him for? What happened during the time that he was being held that caused them to try and wipe his mind completely? Why were their plans, whatever they were, changed so abruptly?

Why did they dump him in the woods, did they believe he was dead and that by doing this, he wouldn't be found and that it would never be tracked to them? Were they convinced that he would never recover and that he would pass away there?

Did they figure that no one in Salem would ever know that he had been taken and wasn't buried in his grave in the cemetery after supposedly having been killed by Ben? Had they been trying to program him after his death, and using the chip to control him so that he wouldn't try to escape and get back home?

Was it possible that for some reason that the programming didn't work on Will, and when they couldn't program him to do whatever they wanted, they realized that he was no good for whatever plans they had thinking of using him to carry out?

Had they been trying to brainwash him to hurt his family back in Salem, and once the programming was finished, that they would send him back to implement their plans. Obviously, they had been able to control him with the chip, but for some reason, something went wrong, and the programming didn't work on him?

Whatever they had been trying to do with him, they must have been doing during the two-month period, but why did they abruptly abandon their plans, and dump his body in the woods outside Memphis?

What happened to make them try to get rid of him so that there would be no proof of what they had been doing, and make sure that his mind was wiped, because if his mind was gone, then he could never tell anyone what had been done to them, or at least what they attempted to do during that time.

For some unknown reason, their plans didn't work out. Somehow, he had survived what they had done to him when they had planned for him to die. He had been left in the woods, and John believes that they had left him there and hoped that he would die before he was found.

If that had happened, no one would know that he had been held, that it would just look like another body being found, that another young person had died a tragic death, and no one would think twice about it, unfortunately so many young people die for many reasons, that another would not raise any suspicion, and would most likely not receive much press attention.

John asks Binington when Adam was found, were there any drugs in his system, and Sami and Lucas do not react well to the question. Sami says to John that Will never used drugs, and you know that, he hardly even ever had a drink, let alone being into drugs. She turns away from John.

John grabs Sami's shoulders and turn her to face him, he tells her that he didn't mean it that way, he meant were there any unusual medications in his blood or hair samples. Binington says that there was some strange compound found in his samples, and that their lab techs couldn't identify it.

John wonders if the unidentified drug could have been responsible for Will's memory loss, and he wonders if it could be what caused his own memory loss for all these years. He asks Binington if it would be possible to get a copy of the chemical breakdown of the compound, and whether it had shown up in the blood samples or the hair samples.

He is curious because if it is the hair sample, could it still be possible to test his own samples from all those years ago, he believes that it is in still in the evidence storage back at the Salem PD, Binington tells him that it showed up in both.

John tells Marlena about his idea, and she agrees with him, that if they can see if it is the same chemical breakdown for both him and Will, they might be able to get an antidote reverse engineered. He tells her that he will hire a scientist who can do this, and then he and Will can both regain their memories, once and for all.

Binington tells him that's not necessary because Fordie has already gotten a scientist to start working on an antidote to the compound that was in his system, and that they are getting close to a solution, that they hope to have it in within the next few months.

John says to Binington, "No offence, but I can hire top of the line scientists, to work on this fulltime, surely Adam or Will can only get someone that he can afford on his salary, and that he must not be able to pay them enough to research fulltime, which I would like, to get it as soon as possible."

Binington replies to John, "Perhaps you have heard of Dr. Mangston, he is the top leading pharmaceutical researcher in the country, well, he is working on this for Fordie, and he has been working on this daily, and feels he is close to a breakthrough."

Justin speaks up and asks Binington, "How in God's name, did a young detective afford to hire someone of Mangston's caliber to do this for him?"

Binington, "Actually, Mangston is doing this free of charge for Fordie. After Fordie saved his 14-year-old daughter from being attacked one night when he was out for a run, he has said that he is in Fordie's debt. He wanted to reward him for saving his daughter, but Fordie wouldn't take his money.

Mangston said that there must be something that he could to repay him, and not even knowing that the man was a pharmaceutical researcher, he told him the only thing he would want would be to get an antidote to the drug that he believed had erased his memories, and Mangston said done.

He got a copy of the breakdown from us that night, and he has been working on it ever since. He said that this is only a small way to show his thanks to the man who risked his life to save his precious daughter, and his wife agreed.

Their daughter is everything to them, they had her late in life and they were so thankful when Fordie saved her, and she now has the biggest crush on him and she blushes whenever she sees him, she doesn't care that he is gay because he is her knight in shining armour. Her parents are happy, because they know that Fordie will let her down gently if she asks him out.

Binington does agree however to give John a copy of the compound breakdown, and John thanks him. He then asks them if they have any questions before they can speak to Adam. Sami and Lucas ask him if Adam has had a good life since he woke up in Memphis and has he been happy since then?

She says that it seems like he is happy with his job and his coworkers, that they all seem to think the world of him, and that he seems like he is great at his job. She says that he seems settled and at peace with his life, which is something that she never saw with Will, that he is so secure and confident.

Binington agrees with her, and says that it seems like Adam was born to be a police officer, and that he excels at it, as they had seen last night. He is loved by the whole department, and that his future is going to be amazing, whether it is here in Memphis or elsewhere.

He admits though that they hope he chooses to stay in Memphis, because otherwise his whole team will follow him wherever he goes, they have already told him that. He doesn't always believe them, but they are determined that they are going to work with their little brother in whatever city he chooses if he decides to leave Memphis.

He looks at the rest of them, specifically Sonny and Paul, and ask them exactly what is going to happen between them, because if Sonny doesn't know who he wants to be with, that he should leave and come back when he knows what he wants?

He says to Sonny that Fordie has already looked up Will Horton's life, and he is not sure if he can trust the husband who moved on so quickly with the man who interfered in their marriage, and it shows him that obviously, his almost former husband still had feelings for his ex while he was with Will.

That he is not sure that he wants to get involved with that again. Finding out what had happened because of the chip, and how his alter ego as he put it was treated, he is not sure that he wants to go back to somewhere that treated him like he was.

Add in the fact that at the same time they were giving Sonny and Paul a free pass for their emotional affair, so he doesn't know if he could trust Sonny to not want to be with Paul, but only being with Will because they are still legally married instead of being with him because he truly wants to be with him.

The group is shocked that Adam knows all about what happened in Salem, because Sonny had hoped for the chance to tell him about it himself, and be able to prove to him that it was Will that he wants to be with, that he and Paul have called off their wedding and their relationship.

That they have realized that they aren't in love with each other and don't want to be with each other anymore. That to be honest, they were only trying to recapture their old relationship after Will was thought to be dead, that they were more like best friends trying to date, and that it wasn't what either of them really wanted.

That Paul and Sonny both realize that unfortunately Will got hurt because of Sonny being confused about his feelings at that time when Paul came back, and he was pushing for more with Sonny, because he thought that he and Sonny were meant to be together, but he knows now that wasn't true.

Sonny wanted to tell Will that both he and Paul realize that they were responsible for a good bit of what had happened before Will was gone, and that they wanted to apologize to him, and that they are going to let everyone in Salem know that they were responsible for so much of it, not Will, and that the people needed to apologize to Will for how they treated him at the time.

Sonny is worried now because Will or Adam has only seen the bad things that had happened to Will during the last few months in Salem, he doesn't know about all the good times, how much he and Sonny loved each other, and how they were raising Ari together.

Oh, dear god, he must know about Sonny leaving Will and Ari when they were having problems, he will probably see it as Sonny deserting them, and how can he explain why he went, that he was confused about who he loved more, now he knows that there should have been no thought, he should have known right away that it was Will that he wanted to be with.

He will know about Sonny going to Paris, and Will never seeing him again before he was attacked, he won't know that Sonny had been coming home to fix everything; and then the fact Sonny saw Paul so many times during the week he was home for Will's funeral instead of mourning his husband.

He will be sure to know that Sonny then decided to go back to Paris again leaving Ari, their daughter after her beloved daddy was killed, how can he apologize and explain that to Will, and when he came back finally from Paris, starting to date Paul and agreeing to live with him within a few months of Will's death.

God, how is he ever going to be able to explain everything to Will and let him know that even though he did all this, that it is Will that he loves and not the man he was about to marry just a few days ago, why should he believe Sonny.

Based on his past actions around Paul, why would or should Will believe him that he knows now that he is sure that it is Will he wants to be with, and that Paul realized that he wasn't in love with Sonny after fighting so hard for him, to the point that Will and Sonny were separated at the time of Will being attacked.

That Paul just up and decided that he knew that he and Sonny weren't in love and that they shouldn't be together anymore, and in fact, he said that he knew Sonny belonged with Will, and that he wished them well. Like Will is going to believe that, and Sonny can't blame him for not thinking that it is true.


	7. Chapter 7

Slow Southern Style – Chapter 7

Adam has decided that he needed to get the DNA test done to prove or disprove the claim, because he needs to know for sure if he is really Will Horton, even though it seems quite clear that he is. He needs to know if he has a child, if there is a little girl out there who he is part of, however he thinks to himself, is it fair to her because he doesn 't remember her at all.

Would finding out that her father is still alive but has no memory of her, would it hurt her, make her more confused? How is a child supposed to understand that when most adults cannot deal with it.

Rather than put it off, and give him a chance to talk himself out of doing it, he calls their DNA tech and his partner, Greg Sanders and Nick Stokes and he explains the situation to them, he asks them to come take the swabs for the samples, so the tests can be run and then finally they will know the truth.

Greg tells him that they will come take the samples from him, Sami and Lucas right away. They arrive, take what is needed, and tell him that they will run the tests as a priority, and call him as soon as the results are available.

Adam just wants definitive proof one way or the other that he is Will Horton; if he is, then he will have to deal with everything he has found out, but if not, then his search will continue to find out who he really is.

He knows that there is an extremely good chance that it is true, because of the timelines and the series of events that happened to both him and Will Horton, and the similarities that seem to tie them together. There are too many things they both experienced for them not to be connected.

He is confused about the whole situation, he doesn't know if he wants to be dragged into the craziness he has heard about Salem since the previous night. Also, would he want to go back to a place that had been horrible for Will Horton the way it had the last year he was in Salem, and to the people who were supposed to be his friends and family who were a major part of all the pain that had been pushed on him during that time.

Supposedly he had a husband, Sonny Kiriakis, who is here now with the guy that his husband Will had cheated on him with, and Sonny is apparently engaged to this guy, and they were actually in the middle of marrying when Will' s killer interrupted the ceremony and caused the wedding to be stopped at least for the moment.

Now according to the information that they had been able to retrieve from the chip, it was the reason that Will had cheated, the list of instructions that had been used to make Will behave in a certain manner like the times he had acted out during that last year in Salem.

He finds it interesting that after Will had apparently cheated, his husband Sonny wasn't able to deal with his Will but he was willing to run right back into the arms of his ex-boyfriend, who ironically was the man who Will had slept with. Interesting situation.

How could Sonny want to be with, be around or spend any time with the man who had slept with his husband, to Adam, this felt very twisted.

At the same time, Adam was picking up vibes from Will's in-laws that they really didn't seem to like Will; so why would he even be interested in the thought of going back to a town that nobody seemed to care about him one way or the other. He likes his current life, the people in it actually like and care about him.

His search program showed him how the whole town had embraced Paul and how they had also turned on Will at the same time, very polar opposite reactions to the same situation. The town sounded like a whole lot of crazy from everything that he had read. It seemed like the crooks ran the town, the police couldn't seem to get them convicted on any charges, they would investigate the crimes, but never seemed to get any convictions ever..

His captain told him that the town had sent him an employment offer just like so many others, but he is not sure even if the tests come back proving he is Will, that he would go back to Salem, the people who are his family could come here to see him, he is just not comfortable with the thought of going back there. It seems like there is no shortage of money with these people, so that shouldn't be a problem.

As he had said, he is having the tests run to so that if he really is related to this group of people, they will all know. The results will be accurate because their techs on staff are among the highest ranked techs in the whole country; in fact, Greg is almost considered a god in that field.

Adam states this to the group from Salem, and they looked shocked that such a small department like Memphis would have techs that are nationally ranked, since they could work anywhere.

They wonder why such top rated techs had chosen Memphis, and Binington tells them the grants that Adam had gotten for them had included the funds to basically rebuild their labs from the ground up, and that the techs coming in could build their dream labs, which was a great incentive to sign with their department as they wanted that type of opportunity.

Also, they were very impressed with the reputation that the department has developed with the LGBTQ community as well as the many other ethnic and social groups within the city, because a lot of the officers and techs want to be on a force that is so accepting of everyone.

He looks at Adam when he says that it's all thanks to Adam, he has raised our profile so much with all of those communities, and the rest of the force as well. He has done so much for us, we never want to lose him, and you have seen for yourself how many job offers he has already received.

We, and I mean the whole department, hope that he never receives an offer that he can't refuse, something that is so good that we can't compete with it.

Adam just smiles shyly at the ground when he hears all the others in the squad room agree with what the captain had just said; that they don't want to think about ever losing their Fordie.

After hearing these comments, everyone just sit in an awkward silence while they wait for the test results to come back. Adam knows that no matter what the results say, his life is going to change one way or the other.

Why should he change the only life he has ever known for people that he doesn't know, and he wonders if he really wants to get to know them based on what he has learned since the previous evening. From what he can see, the only ones that really missed him were the people who may be his parents, the rest didn't seem to have missed him at all, it seems like he became a distant memory for the rest of the people who were supposedly his family and and who were supposed to love him.

Though, they didn't seem to miss Will at all, they didn't seem to care that Will was dead and buried, they were quite happy to let Paul fill in all the empty areas left by Will, letting him basically take Will's place in the family, and in Sonny's life and bed.

To him, it appears like Paul was only too happy to do this, because it made his relationships with his new father and his old boyfriend much easier, especially since Sonny's family seemed to think Paul was much more appropriate for a spot in their family than Will Horton ever had been.

Now that Adam knows that there is no one waiting back in Salem for him to come home, or searching for their dearly loved and missed person, he figures that he can move on with his life, and then he no longer has to be alone anymore, he can finally start looking for a partner.

Meet a nice guy, and not feel like he is living in limbo any longer. Since it is obvious that Will's husband has moved on long ago, since he was in the middle of marrying the guy he chose to get involved with after Will had died.

So now he can let go of the guilt that he had been holding onto and dealing with since he woke up due to the information on the chip, of what he had been forced to do because of the chip, the idea that he had left behind a partner that he had hurt badly, if he went by the list of commands on the chip telling of all the horrible things he had done, each one getting progressively worse.

He feels like this because it really doesn't seem like his husband really seemed to be affected too badly by what had happened before Will was murdered. He couldn't have if he could move on that quickly and be with the guy his husband had been supposed to have cheated on him with. Twisted, too much for him.

It makes Adam think that the relationship could not have been that strong if Will's husband could just go with his life, and not even seem to remember that he used to have a husband.

Don't get him started on the guy who was supposed to be Will's loving husband, from what he can see, Sonny was too busy getting back together with his ex to really care about his husband, not ever being around him or seeing what was wrong with him, and trying to find out why he was acting the way he was.

It showed Adam that their relationship could not have been that solid or that Sonny was really not in love with his husband, that the man he had married had obviously been a placeholder, the second choice when he couldn't marry or be with his real love, the man he had just almost married just a few days ago.

Why would Will want to go back to someone where he wasn't a priority to that person, the person who was supposed to love him more than anyone else in the world.

It appeared that he was just there to make Sonny feel better, but he didn't really care about him or support him; from what he had read, Sonny was never there to support Will, he always took the side of whoever Will was having an issue with at the time.

Also, it's obvious that Sonny was never really honest with Will, because he had never told Will about Paul, not the first relationship or when Paul came to town; it was alright for Sonny to keep secrets, but never Will; especially how deep his feelings for Paul still were.

Adam thinks that it's laughable that Will was vilified for his behaviour, but no one had ever called Sonny on his behaviour during the whole time that Paul had come to town until Will was murdered. What a bunch of hypocrites.

It was alright for Sonny to basically carry on an emotional affair with Paul for months, but Will cheated once and he was forever scorned for it and treated horribly for it.

Why was one form of cheating condoned while the other was treated as a huge sin, couldn't they see that all cheating is wrong, especially when it was knowingly done in one case, and unwillingly in the other.

And to be honest, emotional infidelity is probably worse because there are feelings involved, especially over a former lover.

Why should Adam if he is indeed Will go back to that, somewhere where he is considered inferior or second best to his own husband and his husband's former boyfriend, and having to be there and watch Sonny fall all over his ex.

No thank you, that is not something Adam is willing to do and he would not put up with that. Even though he hasn't dated due to his concerns, it doesn't mean that he has never been approached by guys looking to get involved with him.

There has been a long list of guys who would love for Adam to change his mind, and let them have a chance of being with him.

Actually, there is a great guy here at the station, Barry, who has been so sweet and understanding of why Adam could not go out with him while he was still looking for answers to his past.

Well, now, it looks like his questions have been answered and he can start living a real life with a guy who wants him for him, not as a replacement.

Maybe it was a good thing that he doesn't remember any of this, nor feeling any of the emotions associated with all these events, because he can look at it rationally, and not reacting to all the emotions like he properly would if he had any memories of that time.

He had looked at the reports showing how Will had behaved and how other citizens actually expected him to behave like he was responsible for everything bad that happened in Salem; like it was his fault, and it seemed like the majority of them seemed to believe that he should accept the blame.

It let them off the hook, and they never had to own up to their responsibility for their actions, and they figured let Will deal with it, just dump it all on him, and let him deal with the fallout; they acted like it was what he was there for.

Well, that might have been the old Will, but the person who woke up in that hospital in Memphis is not the same person, he was reborn like a phoenix, as he thought this to himself he shivered, but if he is really Will Horton, they are going to have to deal with his new personality, and he is not going to change to make them happy, and he will not allow them to treat him that way ever again.

He is not going to change back into the meek and mild Will that they knew before. To Adam, he can't believe that he was ever that person, it feels like he could never have been that person, having been like that.

He thinks to himself that it is like whatever happened during that 2 month period he was between Salem and being found and woke up and started a new life, it was burned out of him, never to come back.

It sounds like Adam is the polar opposite of the old Will, and that is a good thing in his mind; he would not let anyone walk all over him, like it sounds like PPL (possible previous life) Will did.

Once they have the test results back, and they know for sure if he really is Will, they are going to have to get to know the new Will as he is now, he can't be the Will they knew, that Will had basically died in Salem, and will never be able to come back again because he is not the same as he used to be, nor would he ever want to be like that again.

He decides that he is going to have to make this clear to them, to him, this is a deal breaker. He won't be pushed back into a role of how they see Will just so that they are comfortable, he is not willing to do that for anyone. If it turns out that is what they wanted, then they will be very disappointed and he will not allow them to be part of his life, disrupting everything to make it like they want and make him act the way they want him to behave, to become the old Will again so they will be comfortable and things will be like they used to be.

He is not going to be fitting into their plans for his life, they will need to create a new one to deal with new Will. To be honest, he is not sure that they will want him, the new Will because they seem to be having a disconnect between the two people or the difference in the personality between Adam and Will.

At that particular moment, Adam doesn't know if the people who may be his family will react to the idea that Adam most likely won't want to go back to Salem, that he will most likely stay in Memphis, how they may react to that idea.

While Adam has been going through everything in his mind, he has lost track of what his boss had been telling the group from Salem and when he looks up, he sees Binington looking at Sonny who is standing there in shock.

Yes, the captain knows that man is most likely Fordie's husband, but he is determined not to let him hurt his youngest detective again. He says to the group that they can speak to Fordie but he goes on to add that there is a condition however, the first one to try and pressure him for anything is out the door, and they won't get to see him again.

This is something that Fordie has asked for his team to do for him, because he knows that he will be hit with a lot of information and emotion from the people from Salem or at least their take on the events from that time. He requested this because he doesn't know how he will react to what he hears from the people who he may be related, and how he feels about what he learned the night before.

Binington tells them that Fordie has been through more than enough, and that all his friends know about what happened in Salem.

They have heard all the dirty details, and with knowing what information was on the chip so far, the list of commands that Will had no chance to fight against, and that how it caused so many problems for him, and just how he was treated by the town.

He also adds that if he is Will, they are not letting anyone ever treat him that way again, he now has a whole group of people in his corner. Even if no one ever stood up for him in the past, he has a whole family here in Memphis now who protect him from ever being hurt again.

He says to them that Will might not have had anyone willing to support him in Salem during that last year, but here Fordie has a whole department full of people who adore him.

They will do whatever is necessary to protect him, and that they are the people that the Salem crowd will have to convince that most of them deserve another chance to be in his life again.

Binington then bluntly says because from what they have been able to find out, no one ever did anything to help Will while he was going through everything that happened back then, and how they were willing to paint Paul and Sonny as blameless in that whole mess, which from an outsider's view can be seen to be both totally ridiculous and untrue.

That won't be happening in Memphis, they have seen everything, and it was amazing how Sonny and Paul were treated like they were angels, and Will was the devil. Perhaps because they were outside the situation; they can see the truth that no one is Salem could see or would face.

That only a small portion of what happened was Will's fault, and that he may not have been responsible for anything at all that happened, now thanks to the knowledge of the chip had been forcing his actions.

That even without the chip controlling him, which it was, and that he was being pushed to feeling trapped and possibly suicidal because he had no one to support him.

They can only imagine how it must have been for Willl, they are sure from what they had heard that the only thing that kept Will from either hurting himself or leaving town was his little girl.

That Paul and Sonny's actions were making the situation ten times worse, and for him to see constantly how the others wanted Sonny to be with Paul; and to have everyone telling his husband to leave him for a better man, that was just insane and so incredibly hurtful and soul destroying.

He tells them that to be honest, that they don't deserve to have Will back, except for his parents, most specifically his mother. She is the only person who never betrayed and deserted Will during that time.

They point out that even Lucas for some reason was involved with the woman who was treating his son like dirt for the same thing that they were doing during that very period. He asks them bluntly why they should get a chance to have Will back in their lives?

What have they done to prove they deserve that chance, why should he go back to a place that treated him so badly during the time he was there, when he is loved and respected like he is Memphis. What does Salem have to offer him that he can't find in Memphis?

God knows once he is ready to date that the guys will be lining up to date him, and he can have his choice of guys to go out with. We have all seen the guys hitting on him, he gets so shocked that they want him, he really can't see how great he is.

He is free to date now because obviously there was no was no one waiting for him at home, that he doesn't have a partner or husband that was missing and wanting him back. Sonny starts to protest and Binington looks at him and says to him, didn't Will's supposed killer interrupt your wedding to this guy, Paul?

You can't say that you were missing Will or wishing for him to come home, not when you in the middle of marrying another man, a man who you were at least emotionally if not physically cheating with while you were married to Will?

Why should you get a chance to try and get back with Will, why should we believe that you want Will back, it must only be out of guilt, because you didn't want him before he died, you left town to decide who you loved more, your husband or your ex?

That should never have been a question, your automatic answer should have been your husband, and no one else ever. Fordie deserves better than a guy who can't tell who he cares for more - his husband or his ex-boyfriend.

Someone better than a guy who married someone while he was still in love with his ex-boyfriend. That was such a nasty thing to do to your spouse, someone who you were supposed to be deeply in love with. Then to run off to Paris, letting him be left alone to face the scorn and rage of the whole town who went out of their way to tell him just horrible he was,and that he deserved every bit of the treatment he was getting.

How would you feel if the situation had been reversed, and Will had an ex come back into his life and work to destroy your marriage, which is what that guy did, whether anyone here wants to admit it or not?

Actually, most of you here tried to help the ex by trying to get you to leave Will and be with him. Why should any of you get a second chance, why do you deserve one?

I am not talking about his mom, she seems to be the only one who never threw Will aside in favor of the new guy.

I found it hard to believe that you went from being so much in love and almost finishing the wedding ceremony to be married to then calling everything off in a few days, because otherwise, you would just be asking for the DNA results, so that you could get a legal divorce so that you could be with your old/new true love.

You can't still be together, you don't act like a couple who are madly in love and distraught over having your wedding cancelled. If you feel so little for each other, why did you act the way you did when you were in Salem while Fordie was there?

Looking at Paul and Sonny, he then says to them, ¨If you could call off your wedding so suddenly, why did you try to ruin his marriage in the first place, did you think you were entitled to be with the guy you rejected, and that now because you were ready to come out when you weren't before?¨

Looking specifically at Paul, Binington asks, ¨Did you feel that it didn't matter that your ex had a husband, not that he seemed to remember that fact when you started flirting with him all the time, but that happening for months was not as a bad as a one time thing that happened with Will?

That you were just as responsible for, if not more, because in Will's case, there is proof that the chip was forcing to act as he was during that time. Do you realize that due to the chip, that Will was not really able to consent to actually having sex with you, so in his case, he did not willingly cheat on his husband.

I am not saying that you attacked him or raped him, but look at it this way, how would you feel if you were the one who was not able to control your actions and had something like that happen to you.

Think about and the ramifications and consequences that he had to deal with because of his not being able to control or be responsible for anything he did at that time. Especially the fallout when the cheating was revealed.

Why was he portrayed as if he was the worst in the world for cheating on his husband, and you were given a free pass, and not be blamed for your part in the incident, you were told you were not responsible for anything.

Although it was you that had insisted on a confidentiality agreement that placed Will in the spot of not being able to tell anyone why he was spending so much time away from his husband or why? I

f he had been able to tell his husband what he had been doing, perhaps Sonny might have actually told him that you were his ex, since Will was interviewing you about coming out as gay, so that Will and Sonny could have been on the same page.

If this had happened, Will would not have been feeling so isolated, and Sonny might have been paying enough attention to Will that he would have realized that there was something wrong with Will, and hopefully tried to get him some help.

Hopefully, Sonny would have stood up to the others, and Will would not have been treated so badly by the Salemites even though ironically, almost everyone in town has cheated at one time or another, but they had the nerve to treat what Will did like it was so much worse than any of their previous behaviour, can you explain that to me.

He then looks at Sonny, and says ¨I can't see how what Will did, especially since he was controlled by the chip, was so much worse than the multiple affairs that members of his family as well as your own family had over the years, not counting the hundreds of affairs that were carried out by the other citizens in town.

If Fordie is Will, what is your reasoning for getting him to believe anything you say, what do you have to tell him that would give him the idea that he should even go back to Salem to visit, let alone move there, because as far as we can see, his life here in Memphis is a million times better than the one he may have left behind in Salem.

Here, he is loved and well-respected, and he has a group of friends and protectors that will have his back. I can't say that I believe that he would have the same level of support back there, and he doesn't deserve to be treated the way Will was during that time

A warning for you, if he goes back, a large number of us will be going with him, to be there for himself while he tries to see if there is anything that would make him want to go back there permanently.

We are getting ahead of ahead of ourselves though, because we still don't know for sure if Fordie is Will.

We need to call Greg and see if they can get the DNA test results as soon as possible, so that Fordie can know the truth once and for all, and if you are part of his past, it can let him decide if he wants you to be part of his future.

Hey, Philson, is that new lab tech still here, the one whose team came to ask Fordie to use his search program for them on their serial case, and he then helped them get their suspect and the proof needed to get a conviction.

Philson, "That's right, your total is actually 5 now, we didn't count that guy, did we?"

Fordie, "Well, he didn't come here specifically looking for me, so I didn't count him, but I guess it could be considered as part of my total, hey, one more and I get a free cup of coffee", the rest of the officers start to laugh at Fordie's comment while everyone from Salem just looks on in shock.

They can't believe that he is so calm and unconcerned about catching so many serial killers since he became a cop, and that he is acting like it is a normal occurrence, which from what they have heard, for him it is.

He is so unlike Will, because he is so confident and comfortable in his own skin, he doesn't have any of Will's insecurities, which is good; but they wonder how will the people in Salem react to the new Will, and his band of brothers and sisters who are determined that they will protect him from being hurt again, and especially for something he was not responsible for.

Philson gets on the phone and calls the tech up from the lab, and he walks in, and he makes a beeline for Fordie's desk, where he sits on the edge of the desk, and he says, "Hey, sexy Xander, what can I do for you today?"

Fordie laughs and pushes him off the side of the desk, and says ¨Hey Barry¨, and he then asks him if the DNA test on him and two of the visitors here are completed; he tells him the reason is because it seems that he might be their just discovered missing son.

To be honest, if what he has been able to find, they might be right, so they are nervously waiting on the results to see if he is. The tech looks at him in confusion, and asks him how they only noticed lately that he wasn't there.

Fordie explains that they believed that their son had been murdered, and that until yesterday they believed that they had buried their son, and then found out that there was not a body in his casket. Adam then tells Barry the lab tech that they had only found a few days ago that there was the possibility that he was alive, when his alleged killer had informed that Will was still alive.

He gives him a quick rundown of the information they have found, and how it seems to match up with his situation since he woke up, and the lab tech agrees to check on the testing right then.

He knows that Adam was holding off on getting involved with anyone because he didn't want to lead anyone on if he ever came across his past partner, and then he would have to hurt someone, because surely he would owe it to his partner to go back to their relationship.

Now though, that is not the reality because they can see that his husband had already moved on with his life and is engaged to someone else. This means that Adam can put himself out there, and find a man who would love to be with him, and Barry wants to be at the front of the line.

He has liked Adam since he first met him, and Adam had helped him settle in Memphis when he decided to leave his old team and get back to working in the lab; because the chance to work with Greg and Nick, he could not pass that opportunity up, he would be able to work with some of the best techs in the field. He had loved learning how to investigate, but his true love is working in forensics, and being able to find the guilty person through his tests.

He flirts and says anything for his favorite detective and dancer, he then asks Fordie does this mean that he has a chance now that he knows that he is free and clear to date, that he didn't have anyone back in his old home there waiting for him?

Sonny glares at Barry when he says this because he is not looking forward to having to compete for Will's attention, especially with someone who is already friends with and close to Will, with having their work in common.

Fordie laughs and says that if the tests show that he is Will Horton, then he needs to get all the legal documents taken care of, especially the divorce that his husband is sure to want, since he was in the middle of getting married to his new/old love when they discovered that Will might not be dead, and that he needs to do all of this before he can even think of going on a date.

Sonny starts to tell him that he and Paul are no longer together, but Adam interrupts him and says seriously, ¨If you were so torn up over who you loved, enough to let it screw up your marriage, how can you just end your relationship so quickly like Binington asked you earlier?¨

Sonny stumbles with his answer, trying to explain that while they had thought that Will was gone, that he and Paul had gotten the chance to have a real and out relationship; which is what they had always wanted but couldn't when they were first together due to Paul not being out the first time they were dating, they had to hide so Paul's career wouldn't be affected.

They try to explain to Adam that they realize now that they needed to have that time together in a known relationship, so that they could get closure on their previous relationship and find the people that they are truly meant to be with, their once in a lifetime love, and that Will is Sonny's once in a lifetime love.

Adam just looks at Sonny, and says seriously, ¨I am supposed to take that as the reason that the two of you behaved for that whole time in Salem that wrecked Will's life for that last year. You expect that if I am Will, that i would run back to you, and forget just how much you two put Will through, the amount of ridicule you let him be put through thanks to the screwed up relationship you two caused during that time. Do I look crazy to you, really?¨


End file.
